Mitt took a couple more deep breaths to fortify himself and set out eastward, down a long hallway, toward one of the nurses’ stations. Each inpatient floor had two such nurses’ stations, one in the east wing and one in the west. He knew it would not be difficult to find because it was literally in his path, serving half of the patients’ rooms on the seventeenth floor. As he headed in its direction, he marveled at how different the new Bellevue was from the old. In the old Bellevue, of which he’d seen pictures, particularly in a terrific Bellevue Hospital history book titled Bellevue, which he’d read that very June, the patients were crammed cheek by jowl into large, elongated wards with beds lining both walls and common latrines. The new Bellevue had a variety of room sizes but mostly sextuplets, with a fewer number of triplets and even some singles. The predominant number, six, had been a compromise between the Bellevue Hospital administrative planning board and Medicare and Medicaid demands. Of course, the real luxury was that each room had its own bathroom, a striking innovation for a public hospital.
The nurses’ station that Mitt approached was a beehive of activity. It was defined by a white laminate counter that formed an enclosure of approximately twenty-by-twenty feet. There were two entrances to this command post, which had a bank of video screens hanging from the ceiling, displaying patients’ vital signs. A host of computer monitors sat on the interior wraparound desk, and every single one was currently being used by an attending physician, a resident, or a nurse. People were scurrying in and out.
It was easy for Mitt to pick out the head nurse. She was acting like a traffic cop at a busy intersection or a conductor in the middle of a symphonic performance. He approached her directly but had to wait for her to deal with several nurses and aides before she acknowledged him.
“Can I help you?” she asked, her rapid, commanding tone befitting her role. She was a sizable Black woman with a striking hairstyle of lots of short braids.
“I just wanted to introduce myself,” Mitt said self-consciously. With so many staff members within earshot and such a tumult of activity, the last thing he wanted to do was draw attention to himself. “My name is Mitt Fuller. I’m a new first-year surgical resident, and I was caught in surgery all day, so I haven’t met any of you evening-shift nurses.”
“Well, glory be,” the head nurse said, putting the backs of her hands on her hips and eyeing Mitt with surprised appreciation. “What a thoughtful gesture, Doctor. My name is Kaliyah Wilson. Everyone calls me Kay. I’m pleased to make your acquaintance. Welcome to the team.”
“Thank you,” Mitt responded. “I also want to warn you and your colleagues that I’m on call tonight, my first night. I hope I’m up to your expectations, come what may. I’m a bit worried that medical school didn’t train me very well in practical terms.”
“You’ll do fine,” Kay scoffed, giving Mitt a small wave for emphasis. “Relax! There’s always a bit of adjustment, and we nurses often joke about July first being dangerous. But I like your attitude, as I’m sure others will, too.”
“I also wanted to ask if perhaps Ella Thompson, Roberto Silva, or Bianca Perez are here on seventeen? They were admitted this afternoon, and they need admission histories and physicals, which I’ve been tasked to do.”
“Nope, they’re not here with us. We only had one admission today, and it wasn’t any of those three, but I can tell you where they are.” She leaned forward and typed the names into the computer directly in front of her. “Okay,” she added a minute later while straightening up. “Thompson and Perez are on Fifteen East and Silva is on Fifteen West.”
“Thank you,” Mitt said before stepping out of the way. There were now several other people vying for her attention.
Leaving the central desk, Mitt headed back the way he’d come and then over to the west side of the building to stop in at the floor’s second nurses’ station, where he repeated his introduction. Again, it went as well as it had with Nurse Wilson. With the seventeenth floor taken care of, he sought out a stairway, thinking that would be the fastest way to get down to the sixteenth floor, where he intended to repeat the process of introducing himself.
A stairway was easy to find, as it was clearly marked with a red illuminated Exit sign, but before he entered, he checked to see if the door was locked from inside. It was good he checked because it indeed was locked. Had he used the stairs, Mitt would have had to go all the way down to the first floor to exit, which he was obviously loath to do. Instead, he headed back to the bank of elevators just to go down a single floor.
As he approached the elevator lobby at the end of the long hall, he braced himself in case he was assaulted by the same phantosmia he’d experienced earlier. Luckily he wasn’t.
With a bit of relief, he joined a handful of visitors who were waiting for an elevator to arrive. A few of them eyed Mitt, obviously recognizing that he was one of the doctors from his white coat and scrubs. He imagined they were duly impressed, which made him feel strangely proud. At the same time, he was glad they had no idea of all the uncertainties he felt.
When he boarded the crowded elevator, he felt self-conscious pressing the sixteenth-floor button, as it seemed ridiculous to be using an elevator to go one floor. But he need not have bothered because when the doors opened on the sixteenth floor, there were a number of people waiting, meaning the elevator would have stopped anyway. Mitt had to push through them in their eagerness to board.
For a few minutes after the elevator departed, Mitt remained standing in the now-empty lobby for fear he might have to face another horrid olfactory hallucination like up on the seventeenth floor. Hesitantly he sniffed the air as he glanced around the immediate area. Only after it seemed apparent he wasn’t going to be reassaulted did he allow himself a few normal deep breaths. Reassured, he then started forward, once again heading eastward to mirror what he’d just done upstairs.
As he walked, his mind jumped ahead. Assuming his sixteenth-floor visit would be as quick as the one to the seventeenth had been, he’d soon be facing his three admission histories and physicals down on the fifteenth floor. He found himself particularly thankful for Madison’s suggestions. Had she not made them, he would have done medical school histories, which would have taken many, many hours. Mitt was hopeful he could get back to the on-call room for some rest before he had to face whatever it was going to be as “the first line of defense” for all the needs of all the surgical inpatients.
As Mitt approached the busy sixteenth floor east nurses’ station, he found himself wondering if he was going to be lucky that night and not have to face a complicated clinical problem that he was ill-equipped to handle. Regrettably, as soon as the question formed in his mind, his precognitive abilities suggested he was not going to be lucky, and the disturbing thought was combined with a bit of his characteristic tingling. All in all, it was not an auspicious omen.