Medically Speaking

Chapter 27

TW: There's vomit at the beginning of this chapter but I PROMISE it gets better.

When considering what I had dreamed being a nurse would be like before I actually was one, I'd like to think that I was practical. I knew it was more than cheerfully waltzing into a room, following a doctor's order without a second thought, and then skipping back out to go check on another patient. I never pictured myself single handedly saving a patient or simply coasting through without caring about individual patient outcomes.

But there were certain things about being a nurse that I definitely hadn't prepared for. How much it would hurt when patients died. How frustrating it would be when doctors or the senior members of care teams discounted your intelligence. How discouraging it could be to watch a kid's condition get worse, no matter how much effort everyone was putting into making them better.

What I really hadn't accounted for when I came into this career all bright eyed and bushy tailed was just how awful someone else's vomit in your hair could smell.

You think you know. After college parties, homecoming football games in the student section, and visiting local bars with shady card checking policies, you think you've experienced the full spectrum of what vomit can look and smell like. I honestly thought that the aftermath of Beth Middleton puking in her boyfriend's mouth during sex at a party had been the peak of my vomit-related life experiences.

Then I became a nurse.

I'll give the kid this, he hadn't meant to, and I usually have much sharper skills in either catching it in an appropriate device or getting the hell out of the way. He'd had his head down in a barf bag but then someone asked a question, he looked up to answer like the polite kid that he is, and his stomach chose that exact moment to projectile vomit all over the room. It was like something from a horror movie, and I would have been impressed by how much propulsion he'd managed to get behind it if I hadn't been in the line of fire.

By some amount of grace, I'd been able to turn my body so he'd only gotten it in my hair and on the back of my neck and scrubs. Since I was already coated but not anywhere that was an immediate bio-risk, I had sacrificed myself to catching the next few waves of vomit in a plastic wash basin while we waited for the order for stronger anti-nausea meds to come through. There were still thirty minutes left on my shift by the time I felt comfortable leaving, but Danny took pity on me and told me that they'd cover my patients so I could go shower and go home.

The problem is that long ago, before I even thought about applying to this hospital, they remodeled and the only showers available to nurses were down on the first floor near the ER locker room. So, I had to do the walk of shame down to the elevators and then to the emergency wing, earning looks of disgust and a few close calls for my shoes from those who got an unfortunate whiff of the smell.

As luck would have it, coming out of one of the larger conference rooms on the first floor was someone I knew. Someone I'd really like to not give a bad impression of me. And he saw me. "Joey!" Gabe called out with a wave as he rushed towards me. His grin dropped when I held my hand out and stepped away from him.

It made me feel bad, but he'd thank me later. "I'm so sorry. I'd hug you if I could, but a patient just puked on me. You do not want a face full of that, I promise," I apologized and understanding flickered in his eyes.

"Gross. That kind of shit happens to Sean, sometimes. Are you headed to the showers?"

Nodding and trying not to think about the filmy chunks I can feel on the skin of my neck, I said, "Yeah, hopefully I can get in before shift change." I was slowed down by having to wipe most of the drippage off before grabbing my stuff from my locker. Then I waited for an empty elevator, hard to come by at this time of night with people coming and going after dinner and visiting after work, so no one would be trapped having to smell me for an eight-floor descent into hell.