Anonymous Doctor

Phone rings last night.

On my day off!

"Yeah, I just wanted to give you the update on your patients. I'm going to write it all in the notes, but I thought I'd call and--"

No! The notes are there for a reason! I'll read it tomorrow! What use is knowing it the night before? I'm not going to be doing anything about anything, I'm not there, the night float people will do whatever they need to do, why are you spoiling my day off??

Oh well. Ten minutes on the phone. "Yeah... sure... oh... yeah... yep... yeah...." At least I'm not a fellow. The fellows on this service do overnight call from home, but they cover the whole hospital, and have to pick up no matter what-- there's no system here where non-urgent calls get held until the morning, everyone who calls gets the covering fellow... so every night, they get like 75 phone calls.

"I feel this strange feeling..."

"Go to the emergency room."

"I have a fever..."

"Go to the emergency room."

"I'm having trouble sleeping..."

"Keep trying."

"Oh, I just wanted to leave a message..."

"Yeah, I'm the answering machine."

I'm just imagining that's how it goes. One of the few good things about residency is that when you're off, you're really off. No one can call me in, no one can make me cancel a vacation, it just doesn't work that way.

So don't call me on my day off! I don't want to think about the hospital! At all!