So, yep, I got the dreaded visit yestereen from the Nursing Supervisor (evil! No! Sharp Pointy Goatee!), in which he apologized and offered to show me the list of people he’d already called to try to fill the staffing vacancies, but NO LUCK.
I would have to stay and work the night shift (11p to 7:15a) as well as my scheduled 3-11.
Fortunately, I had brought my library copy of On the Road, and the elderly guy I was 1:1ing (one staff to one patient at all times… usually these get ordered when people are either suicidal or assaultive. Mine last night was on for assaultive behaviors), anyway he had come down with the flu and vomited all over the lounge earlier in the evening shift, consequently feeling so miserable that aside from some, um, explosive diarrhea at five-thirty in the morn, he slept like an Ambien addict.
Which meant I pulled up an extra chair for my feet, making a little nest out of two chairs pushed together, grabbed a knit blanket, and settled in outside his door for eight hours of reading and Pepsi-swilling and pizza and popcorn and hot buttered toast eating and occasionally wanderings up and down the hall to talk to Melissa (1:1ing a MUCH more colorful case: man thought he was part of a plane crash and we were tormenting him… although we were also “Angela” and “Lisa,” apparently relatives. Dunno) and Stacey (nurse, v cool) and Deb (another patient care provider, good egg).
Kerouac makes slightly more sense when you’re really sleep deprived. It must be a little bit like reading him high, because all of a sudden it seems profound and exciting and, wow. It really isn’t that good.
Came home and slept as one dead, waking up at ten-thirty and then at a quarter after twelve when Steve came home from church and started pounding out some classical masterpiece on the piano. Loverly. Have since then eaten lunch, showered, and sat out on a lawn chair reading the first draft of Jo’s latest research paper on Lewis’s Chronicles of N and giving some editorial feedback.
And now must put on my urine and vomit shoes and head back to the psych ward for another magnificent shift… luckily I still have some Pepsi left.
Here’s praying that the night shift doesn’t call in sick again. I’d like to be able to come home tonight.
