Driving Away on Christmas Day

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulr7MPyhPaY&feature=related

I’ve never had to work on Christmas Day before, especially as a mother. My children are 7 and 9 and I am acutely aware that this could be the last Christmas where they both believe in Santa. I can’t believe how quickly the years have gone by already, and being the sentimental person I am; well, this was an exceptionally difficult holiday season for me.

Christmas morning I got up at 0430, showered, got dressed, ate breakfast and at 0530 woke up the kids and watched them open their presents. I was incredibly glad I got to do that with them, at least. (even though I would have traded that for being able to spend the whole day with them) I got into my car and each mile I drove away from my kids tightened the knot in my throat and stomach further and further. By the time I got onto Route 22, I was uncontrollably sobbing. I thought I had accepted that I wasn’t going to spend Christmas with my family, I really had, but the cold, hard reality of speeding down an empty highway on the one day of the year I used to enjoy the most was too much to bear. Then I started thinking about all the soldiers overseas right now who never even got Christmas morning with their families or have even seen them in months and months, so that made it all a little easier for me- but then, of course, I started to feel really badly for them.

I got in to work, fought back a few more tears as I swiped my badge, clocked in and immediately heard the news no nurse EVER likes to hear:

THE COMPUTER SYSTEM IS DOWN.

Knowing what I know about our IT department, I knew we would not be regaining computers anytime soon. 1. they are not fast to begin with 2. they are never around on regular weekends, let alone holiday weekends, and 3. the hospital would have to pay them some ridiculous triple extra super duper overtime for working on Christmas so how much do you want to bet the administrators said, “aw fuck it, we have a back up protocol, no big rush fixing that”. One of the Docs was fit to be tied when she heard the comps were down. She went off about how she has privileges at another local hospital and this would NEVER happen there (the comps were already down for 10 hours by the time I got there Christmas morning) and that it was inexcusable to not have computers for that amount of time. While I do agree that computers should never be down for that long of a time, I feel compelled to defend my workplace at this point by saying my hospital is the best place I have ever worked from retail to the corporate world, to school districts.. there is a culture at my hospital that is really hard to describe. I knew after my first day as a nurses’ aide 4 years ago that I was “home”. We send and receive cute and funny notes to different departments in the pneumatic tubes system on occasion. I’ve gone out to my car to find someone cleaned it off for me after it snowed during a shift, I’ve eaten lunch in the security office after being attacked by a drunk in the emergency dept. (evidently, once you’ve been mauled by an inebriated person, you become “one of the security guys” so they gave me some of their pizza lol), I’ve seen best friends of 50 years walk up to a hospital room only to discover their friend passed away just minutes before.. and because of the warm culture of the hospital and knowing that warmth is encouraged, it’s nothing for me to grab a chair for that person and sit with them and assure them the friend passed peacefully and offer a consoling ear and a kind smile. I guess the best explanation I have for what I see in most of the people and patients at work is that I see God in a lot of places. Many people hate hospitals. Maybe they equate them with loss and death, or possibly just fear of bad news. I see my hospital as God’s Workshop.. so I guess if you are going to be anywhere on Christmas day, if you can’t be with family you may as well hang out with the Big Guy in his work room.

“I believe that man will not merely endure. He will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.”
William Faulkner