A man was killed outside my house the other night.

I was exhausted and it was late and I sank into an inky sleep nearly immediately. A mere ten minutes later, three (or was it four? Memory is such a fickle thing) sharp bursts invaded my dreams.

“Damn fireworks,” I thought and turned over, relishing again the softness of my bed.

The nagging at my brain started mid-turn. “Not fireworks,” it countered. “Gunshots?”

Surely not–not on our quiet little street. The mid-spring violence that has erupted recently is all many blocks east. We’re safe. We’re removed.

And yet something in my subconscious knew that this was no summer sparkle show. I looked out the window. Kids running up the street, a crowd at the house across from ours. Nothing unusual.

Or was there? As I cast my eyes up and down the block, trying to make sense of things, the bedroom door burst open. “Someone just got shot,” BH shouted, confirming my fears.

I argued with him-I couldn’t see anyone from my vantage point. He answered tersely and we ran up to the deck where he pointed at the slumped figure not a hundred feet from our front door.

“I have to . . .” I said as he interrupted me, already able to tell what I was going to say. “No way in hell you are going out there until police are there.”

I stared at him a moment and then flew down the two flights of stairs towards the front door. By the time I reached the front door blue lights were flickering through the front windows and I dashed outside.

The police officer exiting his car held up a hand and yelled “Stop!” but I brushed on by, shouting as I went, “I’m a doctor and someone needs to check that man.”

A few strides, even for my short little legs and I was at his side. He was hunched over, curled in a fetal position but instead of lying on his side he was on his knees, his face slumped over his legs. I touched his shoulder. “Sir, are you alright?” No answer.

I looked up at the cop. “Where are your gloves?” He stared back blankly. “Your gloves, in your first aid kit? Where are they?” I shouted and wished for the safety of all the thousands of green latex security blankets that surround me when I’m on the job. He pawed through the trunk, emerging with the metal box.

After hastily pulling on a pair of ill-fitting gloves, I turned the man over. No pulse. No breathing. I didn’t see any obvious injury but blood was pooling down his chest, spilling onto the sidewalk. “Help me move him,” I demanded to the cop, trying to position the 200 hundred plus pounds onto a flatter surface.

As if by instinct (and maybe it is instinct by now), I placed my hands on his chest, just below the sternum. I laced my fingers and began the steady up and down rhythm, trying to pump whatever was left in his heart through the rest of his body. I chastised myself for not carrying a rescue mask, aware that deoxygenated blood is not as useful but mentally deciding something was better than nothing.

Two small holes caught my eye-his right neck was violated, directly over where so many vital structures live-the jugular, the carotid, the airway. I knew then that my efforts were futile and yet I couldn’t stop. In the hospital there is so much I can do–I can intubate, I can start a line, I can put in a chest tube. I can order drugs and shocks and i-stat chemistries. But in the street I had nothing. Just him and me and a pair of gloves.

The paramedics arrived shortly-five minutes since I started? Who knew? Who was counting? Without drugs to time and monitors to watch, time moves differently. I hastily spilled out what I knew. “Shot at least twice in the right neck. Pulseless and apneic when I got here. Compressions only for about five minutes. Still no pulse.”

“Yeah, we can call this one,” the paramedic said. And that was that.

I drifted back towards home, feeling awkward in my ragged university T-shirt and ratty shorts. I pulled off those gloves, noticing a smear of blood on my arm. I walked to the kitchen. I scrubbed and scrubbed.

A cop came a few minutes later. And then another. Then the paramedic, checking to make sure I was okay. It’d been a busy night. This was not their first shooting of the shift, nor the first fatality. “Shit, we still got five more hours,” he said, glancing at his watch. A detective followed. He wanted all the details.

At one point he went up to the deck with us, staring down at the scene like disembodied spirits. It seemed like a scene from a movie-stark colors and grainy contrasts. The man’s yellow shirt, a pool of bright blood, all surrounded by dark shadows and shapes.

Death no longer fazes me. I’m scared sometimes, thinking about how compartmentalized my emotions have become in the past three years. I no longer cry at the tough codes. Ghosts rarely haunt my dreams.

But this was not work. This was my home. It’s where I go to forget the bodies, the tragedies. Blood and guts do not belong there, unless I’m recounting an exciting procedure or interesting case.

I realize again how naive I am. How violence is a way of life for so many in this world–not just those in the Sudan and Iraq and Kenya and all of the other places I can easily put aside after reading the latest update in Newsweek. It is here. It is in my city. In my neighborhood. On my street. Murder, perhaps the most dehumanizing force that exists, is not far.

And yet it is.  BH and I have a variety of protections-our race, our income, our education, our addiction to substances legally obtained.  I am not so naive to think that I can change the violence that surrounds me.  The issues which contribute to shootings such as this one are myriad and deeper than a 1,000 word blog post.  So for now I will just be thankful.  Thankful that I’m okay.  That BH is okay.   That our neighbors are okay.  And from there-who knows?

BH is traveling again.  Which means I’m at home alone, awake at 4:22 in the morning, scared to lie down because as soon as I do visions of intruders will dance through my head.

So I’m indulging in the guilty pleasure I always take part in when he’s gone and I need to ward away paranoia.  I’m watching Grey’s Anatomy on the internet.

What a horrible show–over acted, poorly written and not a shred of reality in it.  And yet, here I am, hanging on every trumped up plot they can concoct.

So here’s a list of ways I wish my life were more like Grey’s.

1.  They go to work when it’s daylight.  No matter what time of year, the sun is up when they head off to work.  I’m not even a freakin’ surgeon and it’s rare for me to get Vitamin D on days when I work.

2.  They have call rooms that you could have sex in.  Please note, I don’t really want to have sex in the call rooms.  But if I wanted to, that would be the biggest buzz kill ever (well, that and any mention of sports/work/family engagements/deadlines/grocery lists within six hours of getting busy).  Call rooms smell bad, they’re dirty, the sheets have usually gone through several cycles of residents since they’ve seen a washer and they tend to have frequent interruptions as they also serve as locker rooms, break rooms, offices and lounges.

3.  They eat lunch.  Today I needed to pee right before I started my shift but was running late and thought I’d just check in and then meander off to empty myself of the excess Diet Coke.  Yep, I got a chance to pee alright–9 hours and a likely bladder infection later.  Lunch?  Ha!  Make sure you grab some graham crackers on your way because otherwise you’ll collapse in a hypoglycemic fit and that’s just not as cool as you’d think.  I can remember days when I’d clear out five minutes and have to decide between peeing, drinking and eating.  That’s just not a decision someone should have to make.

4.  They still get to cry.  A patient dies on the show and you’ve had time to build a relationship.  You’ve learned a personal detail, like the newly adopted baby or the plan to finish college at the age of 50 or the desire to patch things up with an old rival.  And then they’re gone, and you feel sad as the appropriate angst ridden song plays in the background.  My patients come and they go and when they’re gone there’s another waiting and I shove the curiosity at their passed life deep down and wade back into muck.

5.  When their patients flirt, it’s cute.  Or hot.  When my patients flirt, it’s sleazy.  Always sleazy.

6.  They wrap things up into a meaningful message at the end.  The only thing I want at the end of a day is a gin martini up with a twist.

7.  At some point during the day, their hair is combed, their makeup is on and they have a trendy outfit on.  I combed my hair once.  Six months ago.

8.  They never have to wear eye protection.  Have they not heard about universal precautions?

9.  They don’t drive 15 foot white work vans with no windows to work, causing people on the street to clutch their children close, afraid they are about to be nabbed.  It’s a long story.

10.  When they need something “now” (aka “stat,” “asap,” “right now goddammit”) they get in reasonable proximity to the time in which they requested it.  Should I need immediate help, I’m at the mercy of the stars, the gods, the whims of the administration or the nurse or the pharmacy or fate.  It’s not fun.

11.  They are not up at 5:02 AM blogging.

Yeah, my life is not like theirs.

Ah well, at least I make the big bucks.

Hey wait. . .

Yeah, I may have crossed that line recently. 

I pride myself on being a confident, independent woman.  I don’t expect doors to be held open for me, I prefer to carry my own bags and never, ever call me “Sweetie.”  I’ll admit, I engage in traditional gender roles in some ways but I also work to embrace people as people, not as stereotyped sexes and I hope for the same in response. 

Granted, this was all before I went crazy.  Big crazy.  Crazy with a capital K.

BH has been gallivanting around researching his dissertation in sunny, warm, tropical Central America for the past several weeks while I slave away continue with my chosen profession which does not allow for routine travel to warmer climes.  I love being home alone.  No really, I do.  If BH has an engagement for the evening that doesn’t include me, I relish in the opportunity to watch trashy television, eat pizza and drink beer.  And even if he’s gone for a couple of days, I can celebrate leaving my make-up bag on the bathroom counter, strewing my clothes across the floor, and not having to share the computer. 

But more than a day or two and the voices in my head start to get a little louder.

Moving to our new home two years ago presented more bumps in the night which would cause my heart to race and my breath to catch.  Someone recently commented, “Well, yeah, in your neighborhood I’d be afraid too.”  I don’t think it’s the neighborhood.  In fact, I feel safer where we live now than in our prior location, a much trendier, but more crime-ridden, part of town.

I think the difference is that there are now three floors for rapists and murders to hide on, including a dark basement with shadowy corners and a narrow staircase, a perfect set-up for tripping and falling as I race up it in high heels while trying to escape the psychopath I stumble upon while investigating some mysterious sound.  I should probably carry a flashlight as well, which I can drop, meaning that I’ll be surrounded by inky darkness since the power seems to have gone out as well.  Do you think I’ve been influenced by the media?  I don’t.

My paranoia started small.  I moved my cell phone into the bedroom at night and locked the door to the room, thinking that any intruder would have to at least pick the lock to get in, and in the meantime I could dial 911.  Then I started propping a chair against the door, reasoning that the ne’er do well might be able to soundlessly pick the lock and thus I wouldn’t be able to call 911 before they’d be in the room.  This way they’d have to pick the lock and somehow push the chair out of the way and surely by then I’d have enough time to alert the authorities.

But somehow that just didn’t cut it and I decided to start sleeping in the office, since that has an exit to the deck, leaving me with an easy escape route.  This door was also locked but instead of propping up a chair, I started barricading the door with a bookshelf. 

Yeah, that’s probably when I crossed over to crazy.  

Then the kicker came.  I wandered into the bedroom, trying to find the origin of a mysterious sound (but first I kicked off my heels and made sure the power was on–I may be shaped by the media but I also learn from it).  Lo and behold, I found a radio on.  A radio that wasn’t on the day before.  A radio that requires one to push a lever to the right in order to turn it on.  A radio that’s hardly ever used in our household. I did what any self-respecting, independent, confident woman would do. 

I called a man. 

And the very nice man was at my doorstep in ten minutes flat, complete with softball bat in hand.  A thorough inspection of the house revealed no intruders but also no explanation for why the radio was on. 

The very nice man left his softball bat with me, making sure I knew to “choke up a bit” if I was attempting to club someone but felt like I wasn’t getting enough force.  And the softball bat hasn’t left my side since.  At least not when I’m at home.My nightly ritual goes as follows: 

1. Stand at the top of the basement stairs and listen for indications of anyone hiding out in those shadowy corners
2. Inspect the entire upstairs including all closets and under all beds
3. Lock office door
4. Barricade office door
5. Check door to deck
6. Barricade door to deck (in case someone comes in that way.  If two people attacked at once, one from the hallway to the rest of the house and one from the deck, I’d just be screwed)
7. Assure that cell phone is within reach
8. Lie down next to old Big Bat, which I’ve carried around throughout the evening, meaning that Big Bat was lugged to the basement along with a load of laundry, watched me make dinner and then kept me company on the couch while we watched the Oscars

I woke up at 2:00 AM the other night and had to pee like a mo-fo.  I considered my options:   A) Unbarricade door to rest of house and go pee with Big Bat tagging along.  Clearly the most dangerous, as any threats are most likely to come through the house.  B)  Unbarricade the door to the deck and pee off the deck.  Probably the most embarrassing option, as I’ll either be caught in the act by an insomnic neighbor or I’ll develop ass frost-bite.  3)  Pee in the trashcan.  Not an attractive option, because between the door barricading and the peeing in non-traditional receptacles I’m headed way too close to the path of Howard Hughes, as depicted in The Aviator.  4)  Hold it.

I held it.

But between you and me, if BH wasn’t coming home tonight, I’d probably bring an empty bucket in the room with me tonight and set it up next to the bed. 

Should you make your presidential choice based on a music video?

Absolutely not.

But if you did, I believe the choice would be clear.

                                                            OR

I was running today, enjoying the 70 degree respite from traditional winter temperatures. I stopped at a corner, waiting for the light to turn. I saw a man walking towards me and he looked exactly what I think BH will look like in about 50 years. He was carrying a yard sign and I glanced down to see what it was for. As I read, “Veterans for Obama” I instinctively grinned from ear to ear. He noticed and caught my eye and then gave me a conspiratorial wink as he returned my smile, tooth for tooth.

I think I love him.

 

I’m an adult now.  No, really.  I passed the legal drinking age over a decade ago and I have all the other culturally defined adult entrapments–job, mortgage, marriage, etc.

But what part of being grown up means you can’t still call your dad now and then?  Or maybe twenty times in one day.

Here’s a brief run-down of my weekend.

Saturday:  Drive car a few blocks away.  Note a weird “surging” where it constantly revs between 1,000 and 1,500 rpms when sitting at a stoplight.  Open the hood and see nothing grossly abnormal in a four second cursory survey.  Run it by some friends, one of who is an engineer, so surely he’ll know what’s wrong.  Figure out it might be the oxygen sensor which will need to be fixed sometime but poses no immediate danger.

Spend rest of Saturday working furiously on presentation due Monday that I didn’t know about until Saturday morning.

Sunday:

5:45 AM-Stumble out of bed, having stayed up far too late working on aforementioned presentation.  Baseline sense of frustration/dread/angst still courses through my blood from sifting through articles on “Posterior Reversible Encephalopathic Syndrome” until late, late in the night.  Or early, early into the morning, depending on your perspective.

6:20 AM-Notice that temperature gauge on dashboard is past the red H, which I interpret to mean things are really, really hot (it’s my deductive powers that have gotten me this far.)   Pull over at nearest gas station, which is approximately five miles down the road.  Notice hood of car is smoking.  Frustration/dread/angst (FDA) level goes from yellow to orange.  Open hood and examine antifreeze reservoir.  Note absence of antifreeze in said reservoir.  Bang on gas station door and ask for “radiator fluid.”  (Not sure where I came up with that one, seeing as how I knew I needed antifreeze and yet in my mind since it was going into the radiator it should be called radiator fluid.)  Am told that they don’t have radiator fluid.  Point to large jug which I know contains that precious neon green liquid that I so desperately need and ask for that instead.  Prepare to pour the lifeblood back into the car but then momentarily panic.  After all, I just called it radiator fluid.  Maybe I should get independent verification that I’m doing the right thing.  Whip out cellphone and call my dad with a brief thought that he works six days a week and only gets to sleep in on Sundays but then decide that I really don’t have anyone else to call that can help me as quickly as he can and with less mocking later.  (One might ask why I didn’t rouse BH from his slumber.  Two reasons–A)  BH is truly a renaissance man.  He can build a deck and write a thesis and scrub the toilet and organize the household but his one area of weakness is probably cars.  He knows a bit about cars, but so do I, so I wasn’t sure he’d add as much reassurance as I desired.  B)  He was in Costa Rica.)  Mom answered the phone and passed it off to a groggy father who assured me that I did indeed hold in my hand the appropriate elixir and that I’d probably be okay to drive the remaining few miles to work.  Hasty thank you’s from me and off I went.  Temperature gauge on arrival to hospital–still past red H.  Hood of car–still smokin’.  F/D/A level raised to red.

7:30 PM-Leave hospital one and a half hours past predicted leaving time.  Grumble, grumble, grumble.  Am greeted with 100 mile an hour arctic blasts upon exiting the building.  Grumble, grumble, grumble.  Check antifreeze reservoir which had been filled to overflowing three miles from hospital that morning.  Now is approximately 1/4 full.  Puddle of noxious substance under car does not go unnoticed.  Pour more fluid into reservoir and start car.

7:33 PM-Am now about 1.5 miles from hospital and temperature gauge is in its favorite location-mocking me as it buries itself deep in the heated end of the spectrum.

7:34 PM-Exit highway at nearest exit and end up on quiet, dark residential street that seems foreboding as if murders and robbers lurk behind every unlit lamppost.  Although why they’d be lurking in that god-awful cold is beyond me.  Stalking is meant for warmer nights.  Smoke billows from hood.  Make second call of day to father who guides me through pouring more antifreeze directly into radiator after appropriate cautions on how to remove radiator cap without scalding my skin and a special note to restart the car before I pour it in to avoid cracking the engine block.

7:36 PM-Wish I had gloves.  And a hat.  And scrubs that were thicker than a well-used dish towel.

7:37 PM-Abruptly stop pouring in fluid as I remember previous admonition to restart car, perhaps because I believe that I just heard a crack come from the region of the engine.

7:38 PM-Car doesn’t start.   Long string of very profane profanity emits from my lips.  F/D/A level raised to super red.

7:39 PM-Remember to push the clutch in extra far.  Car starts.    F/D/A level back to orange.

7:40 PM-Confer with father again about merits of driving car the remaining miles home versus having it towed which might cost approximately one years salary for me.

7:41 PM-Decide to risk it.  One block down the road, temperature gauge already locked back into the stratosphere.  Push redial.  More discussion and decision made to stop at next exit.

7:43 PM-Pull into Holiday Inn parking lot, raise the hood and decide to just sit in car and hope that some mechanic will wander out and fix my car while I sit in the hotel bar and down double-bourbons.

7:45 PM-Give up on the fantasy.

7:47 PM-Decide it’s just a car and that I’m going home, smoking engine or not.   F/D/A level back to red.

7:47-7:54 PM-Watch temperature gauge stay glued to the red end.  Wonder if maybe it’s broken and that maybe car is just fine.  F/D/A level past measurable level.

7:55 PM-Catch a flicker of movement.  Wonder if maybe I’m hallucinating.  Blink.  Blink.  Blink.

7:56 PM-Confirm that gauge is now just barely in the black section.  Stream of hallelujahs emits from my lips.

7:59 PM-Stop at stoplight and notice that car is practically purring.  No revving.  No smoking.  Temperature gauge now in mid-range.  F/D/A level down to orange.  Call father and apologize profusely for all the mess.  Wonder if maybe I’ll never truly be grown up.  And that’s when he says, “It’s okay to call even if you’re 31.  And you can call at 32 as well.  And if I’m still here when you’re 40, you can call me then.”  F/D/A level down to green.
Thanks Dad.  For the help and the reassurance that I’ll never outgrow my ability to pick up the phone and frantically bleat out my current dilemma.

For those of you that need closure on stories, the radiator had massive leaks but thanks to my guys down at Tony’s Automotive, I’m now the proud owner of a brand-spanking new one, complete with antifreeze and all.

I just wasn’t paying attention.

The nurse asked me about the output from the drain. “It’s put out almost 200 cc’s of bloody drainage,” she pointed out.

I glanced at the numbers and mentally ran through how much per hour that would be. “Still within normal,” I chirped.

And it was. If it was the kind of wound that should have been bleeding.

But it wasn’t.

But I was thinking about lunch. And going out with my friends. It was my birthday after all. And for the first time in years I wasn’t horribly depressed and I had actually initiated hanging out after work so that I could avoid sitting in the shower sobbing, like I did on my last birthday.

And it wasn’t as if he was sick. I mean, he was in the ICU, on a ventilator, requiring medication to bring up his blood pressure but in the spectrum of patients I’d been caring for, he was relatively well.

The nurse called me as I was headed back from lunch, a wonderfully gooey, cheesy pasta dish that seemed custom made for my joint love of all refined carbohydrates and saturated fats. “We’re having to go up on his pressors,” she said, referring to that medicine that was keeping his blood pressure within the normal limits.

Her persistence couldn’t shake my incredibly positive mood. It was my birthday after all. And I was happy! And things were good. And he had a ways to go until he was maxed out on the pressors.

But I looked at his incision and it was putting out a lot and the dressing surrounding it was saturated with the bright crimson stain of fresh blood.

I reached for my phone. I wasn’t worried, but it never hurts to let the attending know when things aren’t going quite like you planned.

I got ready to put in an arterial line, a small catheter threaded into the artery in the wrist so we could measure the blood pressure on a beat to beat basis. And as I held his wrist, tiny and curled, he lost his pulse. And his blood pressure plummetted and suddenly the room was full of people–doctors, students, nurses, respiratory therapists and pharmacists, pounding on his chest to circulate all the medications that were being called for STAT and I was handed a needle and I started jabbing his groin, trying to find a vein so we could have more options for pushing meds and giving blood. And we got the pulse back and we cheered and the weary med student wiped his sweaty forehead, the ache of chest compressions deep in his arms. But then we lost it again and the process started over. The overhead page went out, announcing to the whole hospital that someone was losing the battle against the grim reaper. For over an hour we rode the ebb and flow, coaxing his heart back to life for a moment but with each faltering beat the reality sunk in that this was not going to have a “good outcome.”

And finally it was over. I looked at the reservoir attached to the drain that snaked to the incision. It was nearly overflowing with blood. I thought back to just a few hours before. The words of the nurse echoed in my ears. “. . .200 cc’s. . .going up on his pressors. . . do you want to do something?”

But the blood and the failing blood pressure were no competition for the other thoughts crowding my mind at the time. It was my birthday afterall. And there was pasta for lunch!

I had done nothing. Because I just wasn’t paying attention.

My world had been limited to my needs, my happiness, my fucking birthday.

And the day meant to celebrate me coming into this world was the day he slipped out of it.

I knew I’d make a big mistake someday. BH has said for a while he wished I’d just hurry up and get my first kill, so the pressure would be off. But this wasn’t one of those errors of commission–writing for the wrong medication, or giving ten times the normal dose, or fumbling a procedure. This was an error of ommission-a lack of action, a lack of trying, a lack of thinking past myself for just a moment.

I’m self-aware enough to know that it wasn’t just me that killed that poor man. He had bad diseases and bad complications and he’d already been through the wringer a time or two.

On the other hand, I sure didn’t help things.

I have no excuses. I hang my head in shame and cringe inside everytime I think about this case. I almost didn’t write about it, too embarrassed and ashamed to admit how wrong I was.

Since I don’t have any excuses, I guess I’ll have to settle for resolutions. A promise to try harder. A commitment to vigilance. A vow not to forget how tenuous life can be.

I’m sorry Mr. Davids. I’m so very sorry.

BH and are avid movie goers. Some have called us movie sluts, as we’ve been known to go to a few that do more than just suck. They suck, then they start at the beginning of suck and ramp it up a hundred-fold until their suckedness creates a massive black whole of sucking, which feeds upon taking the good things out of the rest of the world and chewing it up and swallowing it but then regurgitating it to make sure that only suckedness is left. Really, they were that bad.Which makes me wonder if we were qualified to choose a movie whose main premise relies on a life-size sex doll. Seems a bit dangerous, no?

But it was showing at our favorite theater, which focuses on independent films and as of yet, has never led us astry. Except for The Smartest Guys in the Room, which I slept through. Granted, I was post-call so there’s a possibility that I bear some responsibility for how incredibly boring I found that movie.

That being said, this week we traipsed off to see Lars and the Real Girl and it was phenomenal. (BH never lets me describe movies as “phenomenal” or “fantastic” or “awesome” in front of him, because he ascribes to the reverse expectations model of film watching. Meaning that your expectations prior to the viewing determine what you think of the film but generally opposite of what would be predicted. A movie about which you’ve heard rave reviews will likely disappoint, simply because you think it will be so good, while a movie you’re going to simply because it’s playing at the time you walked by the theater with an extra $9.50 in your pocket (tisk, tisk–use your old student ID!) may actually surprise you when it doesn’t suck as much as you thought it would (see paragraph one for more details on true sucking). Hence, one must pass on guarded, constrained reviews of all good movies so that the person who sees the film after you will have lowered expectations and then be surprised at how good it really is. Life is just one big mind game folks.)

But I don’t care what BH thinks. I loved Lars. Is it contrived at times? The man believes his sex doll is real, so I believe the answer is yes. Is it fantastical? Do people still fill a house with casseroles and jello salad in times of need anymore–if only. But in the midst of the contrivance and the fantasy there is a beautiful story about the power of the mind and how our psyche can overcome past lackings and pains.

Ryan Gosling is spot-on in his portrayal of Lars, a character who is both endearing and off-putting all the same. Emily Mortimer convinced me that I should be a better older sister and Kelli Garner is a fresh reminder that occasionally Hollywood can focus on personality and not just superficiality.

Go see it. It made me laugh. It made me cry. It really is phenomenal.

Shadow and Light

Lonely

Skyward

I woke up at 4:38 AM this morning.

There was a time when I’d shudder at the idea of rising at that hour but my standard awakening is at 4:40 AM right now.  The trauma service requires an early ungodly, insane, inhumane arrival and if there is one thing I do, it’s show up on time.  (For work things.  I invest so much in making sure I’m not late for the job that I often slack off with punctuality when it comes to social events.  It’s not a balanced approach, I know.)

But the problem isn’t so much that my eyes were open a full two hours before the sun rises.  The problem was it that it was my day to sleep in (meaning 6:00 AM.  Oh, how relative life is!).  And I knew it.  I celebrated it.  I relished the concept of driving to work in sunshine and light.

Oh how our bodies betray us!  Apparently six weeks of consistency can actually reset your inner desires, meaning that instead of rising rested and refreshed I laid there for one hour and ten minutes, trying to count backwards and recite multiplication tables in a quest to slip back into slumber.

It worked though.  At 5:50 AM.

Sigh.