You're a Whole Different Person When You're Scared

You worked a midnight shift Sunday night and go back in on Monday with three hours sleep. Sometime that afternoon the kid gets sick, 103 degree fever and your wife calls you at the hospital to tell you his heart is beating 120 beats per minute at rest, he's had a constant headache and can't stop shaking. Should she be worried? Immediately you start thinking strep and then meningitis, the one thing he should be treated for urgently, but there's not a lot of options because you're down to one car and you've got it with you here at work. You can't leave because you've got patients on the table and you're running two hours behind. Down in the ER they're swamped and even if you do go home and pick up your son and drive him back in you'll be waiting hours just to be seen. Just because you work here doesn't mean you get special treatment. You call your wife and she says the boy can move his neck and touch his chin to his chest without any stiffness or pain so it's probably not meningitis. The radiology resident down the hall weighs in on the heartrate issue and you call your wife back telling her to force fluids until you can get home. At ten forty-five you get your last patient off the table and blast to the supermarket for Gator Aid and a gallon of milk, and by then the boy's sleeping and he broke his fever. The strep test can wait till morning. You're exhausted but you can't sleep. Sometime around one you finally crawl into bed and the world goes away for a while. It'll be better in the morning, you think, and when you wake up, it actually is.