#they found him asleep in the specialist's oncall room

[quitefair]

just over 5 years ago, i was a houseman (junior doctor/intern) and was in charge of the male medical ward alone at night. my medical officer was in ED with my other houseman colleague, reviewing the dozens of new cases that comes with it being a school holiday weekend. it was a rare moment of calm, where i'd finished all my night reviews and was chilling in the pantry, waiting for those two to come back up to the ward.

and then suddenly, i get a frantic call from one of the nurses.

"doctor, one of the patients is being aggressive, please come help."

so along i went, thinking, oh its probably one of those older uncles, trying to pull out his catheter again, delirious from a urinary tract infection or something. so i go back into the ward, only to find all the nurses cowering behind the counter.

they failed to mention that the aggressive patient was a soldier. weighed almost a hundred kilos and standing at about my height (170 ish cm, i'm tall for an asian). a guy who thought he was being harassed by an orang bunian and was desperately trying to escape the ward.

a guy who was staring right at me, the person that stood between him and the front door, heaving and sweating and looking like he could probably bash my head in.

picture me having to walk in front of all these cowering nurses, and fucking hold this man back, literally hands on his shoulders, shoving him backwards as he stared down at me, eyes glazed over from meningoencephalitis, probably seconds away from physical assault. all while the nurses frantically called security. bear in mind at the time, i was probably around 60kg sopping wet (hey depressed intern), chronically sleep deprived, and absolutely had no experience doing anything like this.

but i had to square up lmao. stared the guy in his glazed over eyes and told him to sit the fuck down. hauled his ass back to bed. and he obeyed, mind you... until he decided to lift his arms up and uh.

break the oxygen supply attached to his bed.

now this was 4am. there were patients in that ward who were very ill, some of whom were attached to ventilators to support their breathing. the oxygen supply was from a mains pipe running through the wall.

breaking the thingy meant that this guys oxygen supply was leeching into the air around us. any little thing, a spark or static or anything couldve meant... well. goodbye ward.

so basically because of this they had to evacuate the entire ward, ventilated patients included, so they could fix it. everybody in the whole hospital was talking about it. i probably still have the picture of the broken oxygen panel in my phone, because my MO who rushed back up to the ward about half an hour later, was like 'lmao. can you send that to me. thats the funniest shit.'

#anyway. if you wonder why i look the way i look now... #(tattoos piercings slightly buffer and a whole lot stronger #able to stare people down in the eye if theyre tryna fuck with me #and even if that doesnt work i'm probably a whole head taller than them) #this is probably the origin story of that lmao #meera talks #medical tag #also the next day another patient absconded from the ward as they evacuated it and after spending the entire day looking for him #they found him asleep in the specialist's oncall room #way 2 go bro