Back of the ER

Every Thursday night at 9pm on NBC for the last fifty-two years, the show ER comes on. This program is full of fast moving, life-and-death action as gunshot wounds, stabbings, car wrecks, and the like pour through those sliding glass doors into the trauma rooms. And during my surgery rotation I saw a glimpse of this. I was in the room as codes were run, both successfully and unsuccessfully, arteries squirted blood across the room, amd bones stuck out of people's skin at unnatural angles. That was my life in the ER, and I wouldn't have been shocked if Dr. Carter or Dr. Benton had walked in at any moment.

Now, I'm back in the ER, but life has changed dramatically. I'm in the Psychiatric Emergency Services (PES): three bare rooms with uncovered windows and a small nursing station in the very back corner of the ER. It stays quiet back here, except for the bihourly floor buffing. We are so isolated from the rest of the ER, I wouldn't know if all the victims of a 12 car explosion on State Street were being rolled in as I type.

I just sit back here in the PES, part of me hoping that some weirdo will walk in off the street complaining of being chases by pink elephants and part of me hopes nothing will disturb our little corner of peace and quiet, but always wondering what's going on in the real ER.