Afternoons are always hard to get through, especially if you’re the call person who’s had to stay late. It feels like everyone’s left and you’ve stayed behind on something like detention. What I especially hate is being sent from one room to another to another as the day winds down and people get done with their cases. On this particular day, I was allowed to stay in the room I had been in all day.
The surgeon was one of the urologists who I’ll call Deadpan Danny if only for this story alone. He had a resident with the same first name, so whenever I’d said, “Danny” that entire day, two people would turn around and say, “What?” I forget who the anesthesiologist was, but the anesthesia resident was very new, very serious, and very guillible. I was circulating.
The evening charge nurse came in on her rounds to find out if people were getting done. “So, Danny,” she said, addressing the attending, “how much longer are you gonna be?” Another round of people was set to go home at 1730, I among them, and she wanted an idea of which rooms could go down for the night. He said, with his trademark serious BS voice, “We have to close here and then we have to do that other part.” Half the trouble is you can’t see people when they smile through their masks. You get to know them, by the tone of their voices and sometimes a look in their eyes. It was obvious to me and to the charge nurse, but not everyone.
A moment later, the Dannys finished sewing and Danny the attending put his hand on the drape so the anesthesia resident could unclamp it and he could pull it off. “We’re done,” he said. She looked at him blankly at first as if she thought he was kidding. “Aren’t you going to do that other part?” There was a moment of silence, and then… laughter.
No one spoke as peal after peal of laughter bounced around the linoleum room and the anesthesia resident stared at everyone as if the world had gone mad around her. I think it was the scrub nurse who finally managed to say he was kidding, that’s the way he is, Danny. You have to know him to see it. The resident had dutifully turned the gas back on and now this kid would sleep for another half an hour before she could extubate.
He was still laughing as he filled out the op form and left the room. Since he’s the attending he doesn’t need to stay until the kid wakes. He has a resident to stay for him and write the admission orders. I got to go home, but the scrub nurse and the surgery resident stayed until the kid woke. I felt a little bad for the anesthesia resident. She’d been trying to do her job and we’d all laughed at her expense. But it was too funny to pass up.
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