Nightmares

By 7:05 this morning I was running to find my resident because my patient's heart rate was down. By 9:30 they had moved to the pediatric ICU. At 10 this morning, my upper level resident went home sick, a day before leaving for a month. All morning we fretted about the patient with constipation and whether things were ominously worse. By 12:23, a baby had coded and all of the residents were running. By 3, we finally got the baby with no visitors to stop crying. And by 4:30 as we frantically finished our notes before sign-out with the night shift, we breathed a sigh of defeat. And off I went in the 100th foot of snow (or so it seems) home to study. And I promptly fell asleep.

For 3 hours I dreamt of falling asleep in a patient's bed in some unknown hospital and trying to hide the deed from my Attendings. But there was a video camera and I was caught and disciplined for "conduct unbecoming of a medical student." And I called my Dad when I woke up to ask if it was all a dream. And just like when I was five and I would run to him in the middle of the night after the dream with the aliens in the school yard he said, "Of course it was just a dream. And what a relief." Thanks.