Wednesday, November 29, 2000:
Current Empathy Level
(Scott): 45% (... and losing cabin pressure fast).
Amy's listening to: Charlie Brown Christmas.
Half-Korean Mac Daddies: Ride
in style, baby.
Sundancing Freelancer: Urban
Cowgirl.
HARASSING AMY
I was hoping Amy would write her own entry about the new job she got a month ago, but she’s been pretty exhausted learning all the new ropes lately (read: no weekday sex for me; which is probably why I am obsessing about it in my entries so much).
This is her true story Scott-style. (I'll pay for this later, I'm sure.)
Why Amy doesn’t ask me questions at work :
AMY (on phone): "Hello, cancer clinical trials."
ME (on phone, in husky bad dog voice): " … Any sexy babies there?"
AMY: "Wha-- ?! Ppsshh! "
ME: "Did you page me?"
AMY: "Yeah, what’s partial remission mean?"
ME: "NOCTURNAL EMISSIONS?!! What the??"
AMY: "What?!! Haha!! … (aside to someone else) He’s making dirty jokes. (To me) I’ve got people here with me! So, what does it mean?"
ME: "Hahaha … what was the question?"
I visited Amy at her new job today in the Cancer Center.
She left her Medical ICU nurse job about a month ago and was transferred by request here. She’s very excited about it. The high points being:
Dressing up in something other than Nurse Uniform Blue or Nurse Uniform Blue.
Having no fear of random body fluids spilling onto you. Not having to wipe other people’s asses every day.
Washing your hands less than thirty times a day.
Weekends off. No midnight shifts. Less than 12 hour shifts.
No lifting / rolling 600 pound sedated and paralyzed petri dishes ... I mean, vegetables ... er, patients (maybe 45% empathy level is an overestimation today).
Being treated like a professional by the management … as opposed to the management needing professional treatment. (I’ll probably have to delete this line in a month too.)
Getting her own desk so she can play Doctor Nasty Can You Examine Me on it with me. (Okay, so I just threw that one in there.)
Sleeping in her own bed with me every night. (I am POSITIVE she would have added this if she wrote this entry! … Or at the very least I would have slipped it in when she wasn’t looking… !!! … I’m talking about this journal entry, you pervs.)
My baby is officially a cancer clinical trials nurse. She’s involved in talking to cancer patients and enrolling them in new protocols for diagnosing and treating people with cancer (breast cancer currently). She spends some time in the O.R. watching breast lymph node biopsies too. And yes, the ensuing conversation actually did take place:
AMY: "I have to be in at seven tomorrow. I’m going to be in the O.R."
ME: "OH ARE you? Hahaha, get it, O.R.? Hahaha…."
AMY: (stares … then shakes head ever.
so.
sadly.)
(Yes, totally ripped off from the movie Rushmore but that didn't stop me.)
The surgeons she sees are pretty much all female surgeons. And none of them are nice. I can tell when Amy has been in the O.R. She comes home almost as dejected as an abused medical student during their surgery rotation.
The female oncologists aren’t much nicer to my hard-working baby either. Just because you’re saving lives, doesn’t mean you have to be an asshole too, does it? I know for a fact, no.
The male doctors are all quite nice to my shiny-eyed honeysuckle though. No surprise there, but in this case I won’t get too jealous, and I’m actually glad for that. Heck, if you had to work with some of those old battleaxe O. R. Scrub Nurses, you’d be glad there was a *real* woman there for a change too.
(Justification: The previous comment was directed at all those O.R. nurses who treat medstudents like shit, and particularly the one who taped a big fat embarrassing X on my back during my surgical rotation in the O.R. back then. Medea Sin isn’t just about mortality and sex, but per her namesake, revenge too.)
Amy’s also got her own pager now! Although she’s learning how much of a pain a beeper can be, thanks to me.
AMY: "Did you page me again?"
ME: "Yeah. So what are you wearing?"
AMY: "I told you before, I’m working."
ME: "You mean working IT – hahaha!! [Note: I say this same joke and laugh at it every single day. I'm not sure why.] Hey stay away from Dr. Octopus. That guy puts his hands on every female he can."
AMY: "I know. I just nod from afar. He calls all of the nurses ‘sistah’."
ME: "Well, I hope he doesn’t touch his sisters like that!"
AMY: "Why did you page me again?"
ME: "I’m done with my work for now. So, how many pages do you get a day?"
AMY: "Two or three."
ME: "What kind of pages do you get? Who pages you?"
AMY: "No one but YOU!"
ME: "Aren’t you glad then?"
After a long day, we usually leave the hospital together. I kind of miss it when Amy used to have days off during the week and she would wait for me to come home. Although sometimes I doubted her sincerity.
AMY (arms open wide): "Baby! I’m so glad you’re home! I missed you!"
… The LIGER! (awakes from his 23-hour nap): "Mreowww?"
ME (taking off coat): "What have you and … The LIGER! been up to?"
AMY (in her pajamas): "Nothing. We’ve been sleeping all day. I’ve missed you. MMmmmm." (Big hug, very unusual. Spider sense tingling.)
ME (still surprised): "What’s the deal? … You’re out of Diet Coke, aren’t you?"
AMY: "Yeah, can you go get me some? 24-pack. Thanks, babe." (Pats my butt out the door.)
… The LIGER!: "Mreow." (Settles back down to finish his rudely interrupted sleep.)
ME (thinking): "Whew. For a minute there, I thought she accidentally erased my hard drive."
So that’s what Amy’s been up to. I’ve tried to get her to write an entry by withholding sex. As you can guess, that never works because I keep forgetting one important fact :
I’m the guy.
So this will have to do for now.
DR. WIN (resident): "So, Amy left the MICU? Where’s she working these days?"
ME: "The cancer center. She’s a research nurse now. She really likes it. And it’s clean."
DR. WIN: "I bet. No more cleaning up poop."
ME: "That pretty much sums it up."
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