Lonely Nights in the Baptist

Being on call is not as sexy as Grey's Anatomy makes it seem - well, at least for not anyone I know. There are no call room sexual hijinks, no flirting with cute, single doctors, and no dire emergencies (or at least in psychiatry). Instead, call is really busy and very mundane. I usually wander around the ED, very cranky and irritable, wishing that I had become anything else in the world but a doctor, wearing an old UNC sweatshirt that makes the Wake Forest security guards who are inevitably stationed outside a suicidal/homicidal patient's door, telling me "I don' like yo sweatshirt....I'm a [insert any other shitty ACC team here] fan." At 4 AM, however, no one wants to give a dissertation on why you are a Tarheel fan, no matter how die-hard you are about the Dean Dome, Dean Smith, and Roy Williams.

However, probably what I hate most about call is not the work or the scary/depressed/psychotic patients who have decided that 3 AM would be the time they would come into the ED with their crazy command hallucinations or decide to cut their wrists with that trusty old razor blade, but my loneliness. When I'm on call, I swear I hear the Britney Spears' chorus running through my head as if a soundtrack for my current state of mind - "My loneliness is killing me....baby hit me one more time."

For psychiatry, we do not have team structure call - I am literally the only psych person on call - no on site upper level or attending in sight. So I wander the halls of the Baptist alone in my solitude. I wander into a resident work room and see at least 6 internal medicine residents all hanging out together, joking about patients, having human interaction at 3 AM, and I get jealous of their comraderie. The other night I went to the friendly bagel shop to get their disgusting asparagus omelette bagel contraption, and as I waited in line, I saw 4 handsome internal medicine residents drinking their chai lattes at 3 AM, joking and chatting amiably. I enviously looked in their directions in the hopes that someone would talk to me, but they didn't - cliquish as they were. I grew irritable and thought, "Hey, I have friends! They're just at home...sleeping right now, but when they come back, we talk and joke just like your program." And so, I bravely trudge on through calls, counting down the hours before it ends, because after all, the night eventually does have to end, right?

--By Mariam, who realizes the shitty nature of this blog but was getting tired of Farrah's constant reprimanding, "I am keeping this blog alive since residency started, Mariam." This one is for you, Fars.