Monday Night: Smuggling Mattresses and Escaping the Asylum

Studmuffin took this from our dining room window Tuesday morning.

Monday night, about 9:30, Julie (my friend and supervisor) and I went down to nursing services to learn about the lovely accommodations assigned to us.  They had promised call crews rooms to sleep in!  We could hardly wait to get our very own rooms, with our very own hospital beds complete with our very own white sheets that have that special hospital disinfectant smell...

Trotting down the stairs from the 4th floor to the second, I commented, "I can't believe they are letting the staff have rooms when there are families stranded here with their loved ones."

We checked in and found out we were roomies!  "I didn't even know the hospital had semiprivate rooms anymore" Julie commented.  We glanced at our room number and said, "Well, at least it's on Two Southeast.  That is just right below us so it makes carrying our stuff easier...

Now, admittedly, we were a little disconcerted to realize that we had to have the room stripped and be out by 7am, so the night shift could have a bed.  But we realized that of course they would be tired, so we smiled and readily agreed...

So, we returned to our department armed with our bag of linen, consisting of one flat sheet, one fitted sheet, one bath blanket, 2 towels and 2 washcloths...Oh, and one pillow case.  We gathered up our bags, our scrubs, and a pillow from our linen cart in case we wanted an extra one.  We commented to each other that we regretted not thinking to bring a pillow from home, but at least we had our own linen cart, so we could grab as many as we want.

Carrying our burden, we decided to cut through hte back of our department and go down the back stairs.  Julie and I are very anti-elevator....

We giggle about feeling like we are at cheer camp as we open the door to 2 Southeast, right beside the nurses station.  "We have room 2948 assigned to us," I chirped.

"48 has a patient in it."

"Oh."  Instant deflation...  I glance at the room numbers they say 2048, etc.  No nines in sight.  "Well, I guess this room must be at Joyful Beginnings.  I didn't know the maternity ward had semiprivates!"  And we started off down the hall...

Only to be halted by a dreaded statement..."Did they say 29?  The 29 hall is in Behavioral Medicine."

Julie and I stopped dead in our tracks.  We were NOT going to go dragging all of this stuff down one more floor, through the tunnel that leads under the street and back up two more flights of stairs to the Psych Ward.  (Sorry, Gentle Reader, we were not feeling very politically correct or sensitive at this point.) ESPECIALLY since we have a very nice department with cherry wood trim and hard wood floors, and big flat screen TVs...We turned right back around, marched back up the stairs, through the back door, and into our holding area.

To find that at some point between 4pm and 10pm the hospital had taken every single one of our stretchers.  We had no place to sleep.  Unless you count the small couch in our waiting area.  And we didn't.

"Maybe they didn't find the stretchers we stash in the back hallway," Julie offered.

We dropped our belongings and headed through the double glass doors to our procedural area and turned the corner to see....

No stretchers...Instead we see only

THE STUPID BED THAT NOBODY EVER STEELS FROM US BECAUSE IT'S OLDER THAN DIRT!  We always drag it back there out of the way, but we keep it in case we are in desperate straights for where to put patients.  We don't like to use it because it's a full size hospital bed and very unwieldy.  It is virtually impossible for one person to move alone.

As we stand and look at the bed, each silently debating which one of us is going to get the mattress, we happen to glance through a locked double door that leads to an are that is closed for renovations.  What to our wondering eyes should appear?

SEVERAL OLD BEDS LINED UP IN THE HALLWAY!!!

I tried the door.  It's the kind that has the metal bar you push against to open.  We happened to know we could go from our department to that hallway, but if you let the door shut behind you, there was no getting out.  We learned this lesson from one of our doctors.  One weekend he sent everyone home while he finished up dictating and signing off some old charts.  He decided that this particular door would be a short cut.  He went in, headed down the hallway, took a left where he knew the equipment elevators were located, and discovered the door was locked.

Woops!  He turned back around, mentally shrugging that that did not go as planned and headed back to our department.

Only to discover that he couldn't open that door either.  You see, our department is restricted access.  Especially because in the area we use radiology equipment, have a sterile environment, and lots of really expensive toys...

Not immediately concerned, he took off down another hallway...That door was also locked.  The poor man tried every door leaving the area, only to discover he was well and truly stuck...

And his cell phone had no service.  I guess he wandered around there for what felt like hours until he finally spotted someone walking down one of the halls outside the construction area, banged on the door and was saved...

He said he was having visions of him being trapped there all weekend with no way to reach the outside world and us finding him there banging on the door Monday morning...

So.  We knew we could NOT let the door close behind us.  We discussed wedging it open.  But what if by some freak accident the wedge came out?  Or what if a security guard came walking by and decided to close the door?  We took turns holding the door as we each grabbed a mattress and headed back to the front of our department...

Oh, wait!  I forgot to mention that by this time, the other call staff, Jeff had shown back up.  Turns out his bed was in Behavioral Med too.  He actually went over there to discover that his bed was "Cot #1" in a lobby.  Directly under a light.

He joined us in pilfering mattresses off of old beds in a "locked up" construction zone.  We laughed uproariously as we noted the cameras stationed, just like all over the hospital.  "Can you imagine if security happens to look at the screen as it flips through this hallway and sees us carrying off mattresses?  They will wonder how in the world we got in here!"  And we laughed the laughter of small children getting away with something... You see, our department has to be badged in and out of, so really, not many people would ever find our little treasure of mattresses.

So, the three of us are skipping back to our department, mattresses dragging beside us, when we hear...

"HELLOOO?"

We stop dead.  We look at each other.  Julie answers back, "Hello?"

"HELOOOOOO?!"

We answer "Helloooo!" again.

And we round the corner to find six nursing department managers.  All carrying air mattresses.

Why yes!  They took our stretchers away, and offered up air mattresses instead!  Or pool floats.  We're not sure which.

"What are you guys doing here?"  One of them demands.

"This is our department.  We have to stay over night, so we are getting ready to go to bed."

"You were assigned rooms.  We have assigned these bays to other staff."

Jeff has always been irreverent.  He completely ignored the six indignant people and kept walking to our break room door.  Mattress firmly in hands...

"WHERE IS HE GOING?"

"To the break room," one of us replied.

"Why are you staying here?  You each have beds in Behavioral Med!"

"We decided we were more comfortable in our own department."  They tried to argue some more, but when we announced we were sleeping in our staff break area, they relented.  My supervisor reminded them that they would have to have all staff aware that we may need to bring a patient down in case of emergency.  They agreed to leave Bay 8 pool float free, and walked out huffing and grumbling under their breath.

Truly, as ridiculous as I found those air mattresses, I understood their frustration.  They were tired.  They were stressed.  It was now approaching 10:30, they had worked very hard to find beds for close to 200 hundred employees they had convinced to stay in case they could not return to work on Tuesday, and we had snubbed their bed to sleep in our own department.

But can I just insert here the sheer ridiculousness of removing our stretchers to heaven knows where for staff to sleep in, only to replace said stretchers with flimsy air mattresses!  And, they had not even thought to assign staff to their own department to sleep in!

Moving on...

We opted to let Jeff have the break room, and we drug everything except her desk out, and made our little pallets on the floor.  "I feel like we're camping," Julie said...I gave her a slightly askance look.  Julie is NOT the camping type.

We left her office to find Jeff in the break room, lights out, completely sacked out...

Well.  We decided we'd better be quiet and not wake him...We tiptoed to the family waiting area, grabbed some Sam's Choice Mountain Trail Mix and plopped down to watch HGTV's House Hunters...

And we commenced to picking apart each piece of property, every woman's hair style, and wardrobe.

Because we're girls, y'know.  And it was sort of a slumber party.  And we were trying to pretend we weren't going to be stuck at the hospital, sleeping in mattresses on the floor for an unknown amount of time.

Finally, at about midnight, we decided that we were wound down enough to go to sleep...

I think I finally fell asleep around 1am.  But only after we discussed my dad's claustrophobia, and his horror at the thought of burial, and his equal uneasiness with cremation...

Julie's habit of taking a hot bath as soon as she gets home from work, a shower before bed, and another hot bath in the morning....

And lots of other random things...

We both woke the next morning wondering how people sleep on hospital pillows, much less with code blues, rapid response, code strokes being announced through the night, and the final icing on the cake at a little before 6am, "CODE YELLOW, PHASE ONE....CODE YELLOW, PHASE ONE....CODE YELLOW PHASE ONE."

Great.  We were in official disaster mode.

We pretended to sleep a few more moments.  I shifted.  Julie said, "I can't remember for sure what I have to do for internal disasters."

"Call nursing services and tell them that your staff is aware, and we know that AIN'T NOBODY GETTIN OUT OF THIS PLACE until it is lifted.  Whenever that will be."

And we gave up on sleep and climbed out of bed and stretched an whined and stumbled into the break room.

To see that ex-military Jeff has made his mattress up neat as a pin, showered in the sink in the men's bathroom and was sitting down to a hearty breakfast.

The things you learn about people when you are snowed in!

I drug my warm up jacket on, Julie grabbed hers, and we headed out to the sky bridge connecting the hospital to the Professional Office Building to look at the blizzard that was in full force outside...

In more exciting news for that day, I went down to Nursing Services for something or other, wandered over to look out at the garden and saw where a tile had fell out and it was literally snowing in the building!  There was a little drift right there on the museum floor.

Side note:  Our hospital is the oldest hospital in Oklahoma, and we have a small museum near our west entrance that talks about the history of Saint Anthony, and has examples of antique medical equipment...

Return to topic:  I called engineering, and they came right down to check it.  I was back upstairs by then, but Jeff had gone to see the sight of a small snow drift on the floor INSIDE the hospital..."I have no idea how we are going to fix that right now."  You see, the blizzard was still in full force.  Snow was blowing in like crazy.  I don't know how they fix it, but the drift disappeared, the tile was replaced, and it remained there for the next two days.

WHEW!!!

Wasn't that post entirely too long?  Are you still with me?

If so, I will assume that you had a nice little chuckle...And I will continue this tale of woe on another day!!

Please come back...

Pretty please?