It's a very quiet afternoon. This is my second stint at the school, so when I arrived I already knew the players. I was scheduled to cover for the secretary's attendance at disaster training. Although she had already left, she had taken care of the morning attendance and left her e-mail up for the afternoon parent messages. The backup folks had started compiling the bus change slips. This is the school from whence Kyron Hormon disappeared, and no one walks to school, so there is a complicated procedure for noting down changes. Some are called in, some e-mailed. Today, a bunch of girls are going to Brownies instead of catching the usual bus. The yellow slips have been filled out, and I need to check ESIS to find out which class they are in for the last period of the day. A student will come by around 2:30 to deliver the slips to the proper classroom.
Basically, I am only here to answer the phone and monitor the office. This is the day for the school nurse. She has two interns, so my EMT skills are not needed, fortunately. It's a very inconvenient building for dealing with medical emergencies. The tiny nurse's office is down the hall and around the corner. The staff room, with the refrigerator and ice, is the other direction, down the stairs, and through the lunch room. Last time I was here I got a volunteer from the gym to go get ice for me so I wouldn't have to abandon the office (the Big Crime in substitute secretary land.)
The school is on the outskirts of the district, and it takes me close to 40 minutes to drive there, over the river, through Portland's industrial area, past Linnton and Sauvie Island, up the bluff. You come out of the woods into meadows with barns and scattered housing developments, and finally reach the school, two stories and a basement, lots of old wood and windows and box gardens. The office has room for a desk and me, with enough walk-around space for the teachers to reach their mailboxes by the door. My desk faces the door: the computer monitor and the window into the principal's office are to my right and the phone is on my desk to the front left. Behind me are files and the bell system.
The counter to the main hall is a few steps to my left. This is where visitors and late students check in and parents check out the early departures. The counter has a glass window which was closed when I arrived to give the regular secretary a little quiet while she worked. Two volunteers and L are standing by the window when I arrive, so it's very crowded. L used to assist the secretary: last time I was here she kept tabs on me and basically fussed over procedures on my behalf. Today she is working on the bus slips. She is conscientious, but easily flustered. I do appreciate her dedication, though. Soon they leave and I'm on my own. I open the counter window and watch the classes file past to go outside for lunch time recess. Several teachers talk about inside voices and quiet on the stairs.
The principal is also at the training. He is new this year. He'd been gone last time too, so I had already worked with the Person In Charge, one of the teachers. She checks in again and lets me know that she is mainly doing preps this afternoon, so she should be available if I need her. No one thinks I will.
The afternoon chugs along. I finish the small amount of work available to me, send students to the nurse's office for ice, read my e-mail, do my electronic puttering. The student comes by for the slips. A parent comes by to take out two of her children for an appointment. I can't locate the son: he's a 6th grader with variable 7th hour classes, and there is no information for Wednesday in his ESIS record. I am calling around when I hear the beep for an incoming call. I look at the phone monitor: it's 9-1-1. WTF?
I hang up on the teacher, tell the parent that she'll have to wait, and answer the phone. "This is 9-1-1, there is a fugitive in the area, a domestic violence situation, the FBI wants you to go on Lock Out." "Lock out? Not Lock Down?" "Correct."
I realize I have NO IDEA how a Lock Out works, and I call the PIC. She is teaching a class, and needs to find someone to cover. She asks me to make an intercom announcement, but I don't know how to do that either. I am calling the Librarian for that information when 9-1-1 calls again. "I'm sorry to do this to you, but the FBI wants you to go into Lock DOWN." Okay. I call L, and she too needs to find someone to cover. The PIC arrives, and we realize that she's going to have to go from class to class to take care of this. L arrives, and starts fussing over the intercom: she too does not know how it works, and apparently the emergency instructions are outdated. She gives me the principal's cell number while she goes to another phone to call another school for instructions. I catch him en route back from the disaster training workshop, because he has an afterschool meeting with the Site Committee: they are going to be discussing the budget and layoffs.
L returns with phone instructions, but neither of us can make them work. She calls the emergency number for PPS. Parents who have arrived before the lock-down are milling about in the hall. I go outside to check on them, and they ask what is happening. (Hell if I know.) They point to the doors, where other parents are locked out. "They aren't safe, you need to let them in. We know them, we can vouch for them." "Actually, you can't, you have no way of knowing that one of them is not the fugitive." I go down the stairs to let the parents know this is a lockdown, the kids are safe. One tall dark-haired gentleman insists on seeing his son. I say, that cannot happen right now, we are in lockdown. He is banging on the door. L lets him in, and the rest of the parents stream in behind him. Another parent asks permission to go get her son, who is in the car, and bring him back inside while they wait for her daughter to be let out of the locked classroom.
This is not how it's supposed to go, but it's not really my call. I find the emergency instructions at last, and realize there's a good reason we are told to stay away from doors and windows. It's not just about shooters.
A substitute teacher calls: he has no key to lock the classroom. I find the PIC outside the office and let her know. Parents are huddled against the office window, asking how long this is going to last, asking about buses, asking about their kids. Someone says they saw police handcuffing a man. I realize I have no contact info, and I call 9-1-1. They have been trying to reach us: we can let our people go. A uniformed officer appears with the same information. The PIC goes around to the classes with the word, and parents and students begin streaming out. The dark-haired gentleman stops by the door: "You never lock me out again, I complain to him (pointing to the principal's office), you try to lock me out again, I get in, you can't stop me."
Okay.
L shuts the door to vent to me about the lack of instructions, the fact that emergency training is scheduled for next week, the fact that the dark-haired gent is a nut case. I call the principal to let him know all is well. He is 10 minutes away, and soon will be in the midst of debriefing and crowd control.
I go home and post this to Facebook:
The lockdown occurred
While the principal was in
Disaster training.
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Becoming an EMT
For the past 2 months, I have been subbing as a school secretary. I knew that school libraries were in trouble, but now I've learned that all the professions are in jeopardy. This is not a good thing. IMHO, each school needs at least one full time librarian, one full time nurse, one full time interpreter, and special ed staff, in addition to the regular teaching staff. The teaching staff, already overloaded with large classes and diverse needs, cannot adequately fill in these gaps.
The office staff don't need to deal with library issues, praise be, but the lack of nursing staff is a serious issue. The nurse is itinerant, sometimes on contract with PPS, and never in one place consistently. Because of this, I have become a de facto EMT. Back in December, I was trained in the 5 R's of giving out medication: Right student, Right medication, Right dosage, Right time, Right path. (Yeah team!) Everything must be documented, hands must be washed, medicines must be in original wrappers. It basically makes sense. However there is so much more.
The first part of my day goes as predicted. I come into the office, locate my desk, log into the computer, find the keys, and figure out how this school deals with tardiness, absences, signing out early, changes in after school plans, etc. Up to 10 am, I am keeping current with the attendance, so that when the automated calls go out they don't include students that have merely come in late. In some cases, I follow up the automated calls to be sure the kids are where they should be. This is Kyron Horman's legacy, and not a bad one, IMHO. I have yet to talk with a single parent who is upset about receiving unnecessary calls or being asked to provide ID.
On top of this, however, I am fielding the kids that have been sent to the office. In the morning, we deal with those who are throwing fits or have stomach aches or shouldn't have come in to begin with. Around noon, students who take meds show up, and the demands for ice begin: the kids fall, run into things, get hit by balls, etc. Some need bandages. Some need a change of clothes. They fall into puddles, spill milk on themselves. After lunch, more stomach aches and fevers.
The thermometers are high tech. I grew up with glass tubes stored in alcohol, red and black measuring lines, and a center red or silver mercury-filled tubule. Mom or the nurse would give the thermometer a brisk professional shake to compact the mercury at the bottom of the tube. She'd wipe off the alcohol and insert the cold tube under my tongue, cautioning me to not bite down on it. The school thermometers are all electronic, with digital readouts replacing the rise and fall of the mercury. Some schools have handheld thermometers that pass over the forehead to the temple, stopping above the ear. Technical term: temporal artery thermometer. Others have a flat digital one. It tapers to a rounded metal point that goes under the tongue like the old mercury ones, but this one gets a little plastic sleeve. In both cases you press a button to start the process.
The big first aid rush ends around 1 pm, but there's afternoon recess and the trickle of medical intervention continues until the end of the day.
On this particular Friday we are dealing with a constant stream of nosebleeds and mud slides. I have never been clear about the best way to deal with a nosebleed. We wipe them up and have them squinch the nostrils shut, and sometimes give them ice to hold at the bridge of the nose. Today there's a parent in the office who is also an EMT, and she tells me that it's best to have the kid lean forward so the blood can run out. Okay.
The mudslides are more problematic. We start running out of socks. One 10-year-old boy could care less out how he looks: he doesn't want to change his clothes and contents himself with wiping off the mud. The rest are quite picky about color and style, and the socks are all too big. At lunchtime the recess teacher is equipped with a bullhorn. She tests it out: "Stay. Off. The. Hill." Works fine, but the mudslides continue, some quite impressive, some just involving wet feet.
I'm hoping I haven't caught all the free-floating bugs. I'm subbing for a woman with a bad respiratory ailment. She's supposed to stay out all week, but comes in on Thursday to do payroll. She's pale, and her face is covered with a surgical mask. She goes to check on one of the sick kids, who looks up from the bed with big eyes. When she comes out, a parent does a double take and she says, "Don't worry, I don't have SARS." The other secretary is there for two of my three days, and out on the third. I'm recognizing the names of the kids who went out on Wednesday and are still out on Friday. One teacher has lost 2/3 of her class. One child has a fever of 101.1, but most register subnormal. Still, the number with imminent emesis is disconcerting. I start obsessively using the anti-bacterial goo, knowing full well that most of these kids have viruses, hoping the placebo effect will kick in.
Towards the end of the day we start bargaining with the kids: "Can you tough it out, or do we need to call your folks?" Predictably, the parents I call have non-functioning cell phones. I end up calling family friends and grandparents. Meanwhile, the kids are wandering around the office: too sick to sit in class, but not sick enough to lie down. I find them paper and crayons and sit them at a little table. One gives me my very own drawing. Awww.
The office staff don't need to deal with library issues, praise be, but the lack of nursing staff is a serious issue. The nurse is itinerant, sometimes on contract with PPS, and never in one place consistently. Because of this, I have become a de facto EMT. Back in December, I was trained in the 5 R's of giving out medication: Right student, Right medication, Right dosage, Right time, Right path. (Yeah team!) Everything must be documented, hands must be washed, medicines must be in original wrappers. It basically makes sense. However there is so much more.
The first part of my day goes as predicted. I come into the office, locate my desk, log into the computer, find the keys, and figure out how this school deals with tardiness, absences, signing out early, changes in after school plans, etc. Up to 10 am, I am keeping current with the attendance, so that when the automated calls go out they don't include students that have merely come in late. In some cases, I follow up the automated calls to be sure the kids are where they should be. This is Kyron Horman's legacy, and not a bad one, IMHO. I have yet to talk with a single parent who is upset about receiving unnecessary calls or being asked to provide ID.
On top of this, however, I am fielding the kids that have been sent to the office. In the morning, we deal with those who are throwing fits or have stomach aches or shouldn't have come in to begin with. Around noon, students who take meds show up, and the demands for ice begin: the kids fall, run into things, get hit by balls, etc. Some need bandages. Some need a change of clothes. They fall into puddles, spill milk on themselves. After lunch, more stomach aches and fevers.
The thermometers are high tech. I grew up with glass tubes stored in alcohol, red and black measuring lines, and a center red or silver mercury-filled tubule. Mom or the nurse would give the thermometer a brisk professional shake to compact the mercury at the bottom of the tube. She'd wipe off the alcohol and insert the cold tube under my tongue, cautioning me to not bite down on it. The school thermometers are all electronic, with digital readouts replacing the rise and fall of the mercury. Some schools have handheld thermometers that pass over the forehead to the temple, stopping above the ear. Technical term: temporal artery thermometer. Others have a flat digital one. It tapers to a rounded metal point that goes under the tongue like the old mercury ones, but this one gets a little plastic sleeve. In both cases you press a button to start the process.
The big first aid rush ends around 1 pm, but there's afternoon recess and the trickle of medical intervention continues until the end of the day.
On this particular Friday we are dealing with a constant stream of nosebleeds and mud slides. I have never been clear about the best way to deal with a nosebleed. We wipe them up and have them squinch the nostrils shut, and sometimes give them ice to hold at the bridge of the nose. Today there's a parent in the office who is also an EMT, and she tells me that it's best to have the kid lean forward so the blood can run out. Okay.
The mudslides are more problematic. We start running out of socks. One 10-year-old boy could care less out how he looks: he doesn't want to change his clothes and contents himself with wiping off the mud. The rest are quite picky about color and style, and the socks are all too big. At lunchtime the recess teacher is equipped with a bullhorn. She tests it out: "Stay. Off. The. Hill." Works fine, but the mudslides continue, some quite impressive, some just involving wet feet.
I'm hoping I haven't caught all the free-floating bugs. I'm subbing for a woman with a bad respiratory ailment. She's supposed to stay out all week, but comes in on Thursday to do payroll. She's pale, and her face is covered with a surgical mask. She goes to check on one of the sick kids, who looks up from the bed with big eyes. When she comes out, a parent does a double take and she says, "Don't worry, I don't have SARS." The other secretary is there for two of my three days, and out on the third. I'm recognizing the names of the kids who went out on Wednesday and are still out on Friday. One teacher has lost 2/3 of her class. One child has a fever of 101.1, but most register subnormal. Still, the number with imminent emesis is disconcerting. I start obsessively using the anti-bacterial goo, knowing full well that most of these kids have viruses, hoping the placebo effect will kick in.
Towards the end of the day we start bargaining with the kids: "Can you tough it out, or do we need to call your folks?" Predictably, the parents I call have non-functioning cell phones. I end up calling family friends and grandparents. Meanwhile, the kids are wandering around the office: too sick to sit in class, but not sick enough to lie down. I find them paper and crayons and sit them at a little table. One gives me my very own drawing. Awww.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Awful serendipity
This morning I was reading Holly's blog. She was talking about weeding through her notebooks and finding entries about Louie, written before she knew he was dying. It was a place to vent about the irritating facets of elderly-dog ownership. I started to write a comment about how I NEVER find Carbon irritating, even when she pees on the rug; but I was running off to work and didn't have time to figure out how to post non-anonymously.
I actually almost didn't go in to work. The sub line calls at 5:50 am, and I just don't function well at that hour.
Plus, it was way out in St John's. That's a lot of driving for a 4-hour gig. So I waited, hoping that someone else would pick it up before the call cycle got back to me. Vain hope.
I actually almost didn't go in to work. The sub line calls at 5:50 am, and I just don't function well at that hour.
He brings me my phone:
"You have a sub job, Sparky."
It woke him up too.
Plus, it was way out in St John's. That's a lot of driving for a 4-hour gig. So I waited, hoping that someone else would pick it up before the call cycle got back to me. Vain hope.
Normally Carbon and I walk Holly part way to work on Wednesdays, so I send her a quick Mea Culpa message. Then D says, "I'd like to walk with her." An Addendum message goes out. I make some coffee, have some home-made granola, wake D up (again), and I'm out the door.
An hour later, I'm feeling kinda smug, because it's my 4th gig, 2nd time at this school. I know the players, my passwords all work, and I'm actually a little bored. Then D calls: he's at the vet with Carbon. Apparently, after the walk with Holly he walked over to New Seasons on Division, and Carbon collapsed in the street. She lay down, frothing at the mouth and panting heavily.
Bus drivers apparently won't pick up men with sick pet dogs, even when the foam has been wiped away. Taxi drivers are also not very responsive. But sisters, thank god, do not have these flaws.
D is in the waiting room, and he's mainly calling to see about payments: it's a $560 estimate just going in the door. Oy.
A second call, letting me know the diagnoses, or rather the lack thereof. They are still doing some tests and x-rays to rule out heart or other conditions, but they have no idea why she was foaming at the mouth. They think the panting, and probably the collapse, is from a condition called laryngeal paralysis. Surgery is over $2K, is very invasive, and can be fatal. Three excellent reasons to not even consider it.
The heavy breathing has actually become a Carbon leit motif in the last few months. Normally she breathes heavily when she's excited or over-heated, but now she pants just sitting and watching us. We thought she had asthma. That would actually be preferable, I think. This condition is harder to treat: they recommend no exercise, lots of water, keeping her out of the heat.
Problem number 1: She loves to walk. When Holly comes in, she goes into her Lipizzaner stallion imitation, curvetting and leaping and running back and forth between us and putting her head between my hands and my shoe laces. She manages to extend her docked tail into an energetic wag. She leaps out the door and promptly sits for the leash, looking up with an endearing mix of expectation and adoration. I may need to have Holly wait at the gate from now on. In Carbon's eyes, Holly = walk.
Problem number 2: The more water she drinks the more she has to pee. The more she has to pee, the more likely she is to revert to peeing in the house. The more she pees in the house, the more I time and money I have to spend on cleaning. And the more she's likely to think it's okay to pee in the house (nota bene: it's not.)
Problem number 3: When it's summer, I want to lie in my hammock. When I'm lying in the hammock, she wants to be outside with me. When she's outside, she wants to sit in the sun. Maybe her old arthritic bones like the heat? Anyway, she likes to be overheated, and she does not like to swim or get wet.
So now I'm fretting over the difficulties of keeping her comfortable and well. I'm not irritated, but Holly's blog is starting to resonate.
We took advantage of the visit to have the vet look at her mouth: one side has had a red sore for over a year. Last year at this time, they took a biopsy while they did dental work, but I said I didn't want to spend $250 to find out if she has cancer. (I know that makes me a bad pet owner.) Today they didn't push the biopsy: they think it might be bacterial and sent home some ointment and antibiotics.
So now she's home, happy as always, sleeping with her Dad while I work. And I just hope this is not the beginning of the downhill slide. Yes, she's old and her muzzle has gone from grey to almost pure white. But she is too adorable and loving, and I have enough trauma and expenses for now, thank you very much. She's just going to have to hang on.
It's always something.
Old dogs like to frighten us...
We both need a hug.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Closed communities
1/11/12
Yesterday I went to my first job as a substitute school secretary. Today was mainly spent in the waiting room of the cardiac unit of St. Vincent Hospital. The two days were eerily similar to my recent experience working at the mall, in that I was a participant in a system that was entire unto itself. I spent the day surrounded by a community of people with specific and clear roles. The outside world floats in, to be absorbed into the space, previous identities irrelevant to the role that was being played inside this system. Routines are mysterious, tools ditto: one fumbles about trying to make sense of the simplest things.
The school was the more disconcerting, because less familiar, system. My training was over a month old, and all I remembered was the name of the program I had to use: eSIS. I was fortunate, in that I was subbing for the part-time person, and the principal secretary was there with all her know-how and school savvy. While I waited for the tech people to call me back with passwords, I searched my notes for clues and watched L handle the constant stream of kids, teachers, and parents.
She knew all their names!
Late-comers were offered breakfast and a place to eat it, and then shooed off to class. Two students came in with attendance sheets, which were placed in front of me, but everyone else went to L, who dealt with bumped heads (we were out of ice) and broken belts and problem students ("just sit there and wait for Mr. F.") One girl delivered a "pretend letter," which was the teacher's version of a time out. L had her chose a book to read until she was calm and ready to return to class, but the girl was already very calm. "You're ready to make good choices now?" "Yes." "Okay." I guess I'll never know what that was all about.
The principal was in and out, doing observations. Nurse Bill was there for one of his two days. Several kids sat in a row, facing the front counter, waiting for him. One had possible pink-eye, the others just looked pale and tired. Nurse Bill was also the resident Spanish-speaker, which came into play several times. I don't know how they managed in his absence.
Various bells rang at various intervals, but no one in the office seemed to be tuned into them: they were for teachers and students. The phone rang incessantly. L was dealing with a frozen computer program, so I answered several times. I found myself reiterating, "I'm a sub, I don't recognize that name, can you repeat it?"
After 15 minutes of waiting for tech support, I called the substitute office and got...a sub. So, I left a message and finally remembered how to get into my PPS e-mail. Aha! My password info was there. I logged into eSIS and pulled up the training module and muddled my way through the attendance procedures. Then I sorted mail and filled the boxes. And my 4 hours were over, just like that. I walked out into the lovely bright noon sun, and it was like leaving a matinee. The show was over, and I was back in the real world. When I had arrived, the sun was barely up, busses lined the street, and streams of kids were being herded into the building. Now, the street was empty, I could hear the distant shouts of kids at play, and my day was half over. I was discombobulated, and it took awhile to re-acclimate.
Today was a repetition of that sense of alienation. The hospital is an even more closed system than a school, with lounges, cafeterias, magazines, games, and a battery of procedures and jargon. The elevators ding, the intercom sounds at various intervals, making mysterious announcements or searching for errant staff. There are exterior areas for visitors, and interior areas for patients, and closed areas for staff. The doors are carefully labelled to keep you in your place, but they are only randomly monitored, and not all desks are manned. There are littoral zones, where visitors and staff converge and the roles are less clear. There are even tiny suites for family members of critically ill patients. I remember when Dad was in the ICU at Iowa City. When I wasn't in his room, I was sleeping in a monastic cell, wandering the halls, finding a Chihuly sculpture. Occasionally I would overhear discussions that reminded me there was an outside world, but I wasn't watching TV or using a computer. I was just there.
Today was less stressful. G was not in the ICU. I was not in charge of administering this system or explaining it to others. I was there for W, and I already knew the ropes. As a visitor, once you enter a hospital building, you begin creating a home for yourself. You are going to be part of this system for awhile, and you want to blend comfortably. You have your knitting, books, phone, computer. You introduce yourself to the volunteer at the desk.
I've decided that hospital volunteers are cloned. They have middle-European accents, coiffed silver-gray hair, glasses, and skirt outfits with pastel cardigans. They are very conscientious in their duties, collecting names, offering pillows and blankets, finding people. This particular volunteer knew just where W was. She had staked a claim to the chairs and table by the window. The cardiac care waiting room is on the 2nd floor, and as I sat down, I noticed coins and a package of Orbis mints on the concrete ledge outside the window. This was a modular, hermetically-sealed building, and there was no way the coins could have been tossed out a window or dropped from above. The only possibility was that they were tossed up from below, close to 2 stories. Later I counted the coins: they totaled $8.54.
W had been there since 7 am, and it was now close to 10. Soon after our arrival the intern came with the good news that the procedure went well and once G woke up, we could leave.
I was there until 4:30.
Yesterday I went to my first job as a substitute school secretary. Today was mainly spent in the waiting room of the cardiac unit of St. Vincent Hospital. The two days were eerily similar to my recent experience working at the mall, in that I was a participant in a system that was entire unto itself. I spent the day surrounded by a community of people with specific and clear roles. The outside world floats in, to be absorbed into the space, previous identities irrelevant to the role that was being played inside this system. Routines are mysterious, tools ditto: one fumbles about trying to make sense of the simplest things.
The school was the more disconcerting, because less familiar, system. My training was over a month old, and all I remembered was the name of the program I had to use: eSIS. I was fortunate, in that I was subbing for the part-time person, and the principal secretary was there with all her know-how and school savvy. While I waited for the tech people to call me back with passwords, I searched my notes for clues and watched L handle the constant stream of kids, teachers, and parents.
She knew all their names!
Late-comers were offered breakfast and a place to eat it, and then shooed off to class. Two students came in with attendance sheets, which were placed in front of me, but everyone else went to L, who dealt with bumped heads (we were out of ice) and broken belts and problem students ("just sit there and wait for Mr. F.") One girl delivered a "pretend letter," which was the teacher's version of a time out. L had her chose a book to read until she was calm and ready to return to class, but the girl was already very calm. "You're ready to make good choices now?" "Yes." "Okay." I guess I'll never know what that was all about.
The principal was in and out, doing observations. Nurse Bill was there for one of his two days. Several kids sat in a row, facing the front counter, waiting for him. One had possible pink-eye, the others just looked pale and tired. Nurse Bill was also the resident Spanish-speaker, which came into play several times. I don't know how they managed in his absence.
Various bells rang at various intervals, but no one in the office seemed to be tuned into them: they were for teachers and students. The phone rang incessantly. L was dealing with a frozen computer program, so I answered several times. I found myself reiterating, "I'm a sub, I don't recognize that name, can you repeat it?"
After 15 minutes of waiting for tech support, I called the substitute office and got...a sub. So, I left a message and finally remembered how to get into my PPS e-mail. Aha! My password info was there. I logged into eSIS and pulled up the training module and muddled my way through the attendance procedures. Then I sorted mail and filled the boxes. And my 4 hours were over, just like that. I walked out into the lovely bright noon sun, and it was like leaving a matinee. The show was over, and I was back in the real world. When I had arrived, the sun was barely up, busses lined the street, and streams of kids were being herded into the building. Now, the street was empty, I could hear the distant shouts of kids at play, and my day was half over. I was discombobulated, and it took awhile to re-acclimate.
Today was a repetition of that sense of alienation. The hospital is an even more closed system than a school, with lounges, cafeterias, magazines, games, and a battery of procedures and jargon. The elevators ding, the intercom sounds at various intervals, making mysterious announcements or searching for errant staff. There are exterior areas for visitors, and interior areas for patients, and closed areas for staff. The doors are carefully labelled to keep you in your place, but they are only randomly monitored, and not all desks are manned. There are littoral zones, where visitors and staff converge and the roles are less clear. There are even tiny suites for family members of critically ill patients. I remember when Dad was in the ICU at Iowa City. When I wasn't in his room, I was sleeping in a monastic cell, wandering the halls, finding a Chihuly sculpture. Occasionally I would overhear discussions that reminded me there was an outside world, but I wasn't watching TV or using a computer. I was just there.
Today was less stressful. G was not in the ICU. I was not in charge of administering this system or explaining it to others. I was there for W, and I already knew the ropes. As a visitor, once you enter a hospital building, you begin creating a home for yourself. You are going to be part of this system for awhile, and you want to blend comfortably. You have your knitting, books, phone, computer. You introduce yourself to the volunteer at the desk.
I've decided that hospital volunteers are cloned. They have middle-European accents, coiffed silver-gray hair, glasses, and skirt outfits with pastel cardigans. They are very conscientious in their duties, collecting names, offering pillows and blankets, finding people. This particular volunteer knew just where W was. She had staked a claim to the chairs and table by the window. The cardiac care waiting room is on the 2nd floor, and as I sat down, I noticed coins and a package of Orbis mints on the concrete ledge outside the window. This was a modular, hermetically-sealed building, and there was no way the coins could have been tossed out a window or dropped from above. The only possibility was that they were tossed up from below, close to 2 stories. Later I counted the coins: they totaled $8.54.
W had been there since 7 am, and it was now close to 10. Soon after our arrival the intern came with the good news that the procedure went well and once G woke up, we could leave.
I was there until 4:30.
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