Night Shift [h.s]

thirty

☁️ HARRY ☁️

Working the Christmas shift always felt like you were working for about thirty six hours non stop. You'd think that working on Christmas Day would be pretty chilled out and quiet since everybody was at home with their families enjoying good food and spending time with one another, though it was actually quite the opposite in the ED.

The waiting room was just as busy as ever with children complaining of coughs and colds, adults with drunken head bumps and sprained wrists, elderly people with sad tears in their eyes, nothing particularly wrong with them, just looking for somewhere where they won't be as lonely.

We didn't just have a lot of physical injuries either, Christmas Day was the biggest time of year for people with a mental illness to have a crisis. I couldn't even count on my fingers how many times I had just simply sat beside someone as they poured their heart out to me, telling me that they couldn't take it anymore, they couldn't bear to be alone without their family or without a loved one who had maybe passed. It was just too much for some people. It was too much for them to cope with, too much going on and too much reminding them of the fact that they were very much alone. Though no one is ever really alone and I think we were proof of that.

They weren't alone because they could come here and we would listen. A mental health emergency is just as important as a physical emergency and so I would stay here all night if it meant that everybody had somebody to talk to, somebody to listen to their mind. And whilst I wasn't trained in the topic, I could still listen. You didn't have to be a therapist to simply listen to someone, though I know some veteran doctors would disagree. A lot of people just didn't have the time, but I made time and that was the difference.

"Hi Diane, how are you doing?" I greet everybody with a first name basis and a warm smile, all throughout the year but especially at Christmas time. Everybody needed a little bit of sparkle in their lives. Everyone needed to feel worthy and important.

"Doctor Styles- I can call you that, right? You treated one of my kids once, I can remember your tattoos" she looks up at me with wide eyes, a slight panic in her tone that alarms me slightly, especially considering how calm she was right now. I wasn't sure if she was having some sort of mental health crisis or something else was bothering her. She didn't physically look to be in pain and I couldn't see anything that was bleeding or visibly broken.

"Yes, doctor Styles is fine" I allow, more so concerned about her well-being rather than whatever she called me. She could call me any name under the sun and still I'd sit here and listen to whatever she had to say.

"Doctor Styles- I think I'm having a heart attack" she admits to me with pain stricken across her face. Though she still sounded far too calm for me and that is what was panicking me the most. If you're experiencing a real heart attack then you don't have time to panic. You don't have time to scream and shout. Near enough every patient I've seen experiencing symptoms of a heart attack is calm. They don't have it in them to be anything but calm.