are you OK?

2:20 Am

Today is my first on call. I could not sleep very well last night because of  the anxiety about today's call. So in the afternoon, I really began to feel drowsy, and my day has not even started yet.

4pm sharp, the day call team passed their pager to me, and my resident told me there were two admissions waiting for us already.

We went down to ER beginning the admission. During then, I got paged from nurses, change over docs, etc. I had to ask my resident about most decisions, luckily he has  been quite patient with me. 

The first on call day for an intern is a real challenge. Today I am the one wearing scrubs and carrying the pager, so everybody frequently asked me, Are you OK? I was really too busy to stop to chat, only a quick Oh Yeah and then kept walking.

10pm, we got a call from psychiatric department, saying they have a patient with multiple medical issues needed to be consulted. While we were talking with the patient, I got another call from the floor, so my resident asked me to go see the patient on the floor and she will meet me there.

Psychiatric ward is a special place, locked everywhere for security reason. I lost my direction when a nurse opened the exit door for me. It was not the way I came in with my resident. I followed the exit sign, but got more confused. Suddenly the door behind me locked down, so did the one in front of me. I was trapped in a 5 meter long hallway, with no phone, no light and I didn't have my cellphone with me.

My pager kept going off, my resident was looking for me, and nurses on the floor needed to talk with me. I kept pounding at the door, screaming like a real psychiatric patient. It's 11pm, and nobody was there. I stood in the dark, too scared to even cry. 

I kept screaming for help and kicked at the door, after seems forever, finally a nurse opened the door. Not until I saw her, did I realize how traumatized I was. I hugged her with all my strength and began to cry really hard. She padded my back softly while I just cried and cried. Finally I collected myself, and said thank you, she asked me " Are you OK", I said yes.

When I finally found my way back, my resident already began to do my notes, she didn't ask where I have been, why I didn't answer pager, instead she just looked up at me and asked "Are you OK?" "Oh, yeah, thank you", I replied with a calm tone and took over the notes. She then smiled.

I guess it is not important what happened, it's I am OK really matters.