Bitchin'

I was on-call for the heart team one Saturday night, all by myself.

Our hospital is one of the top 20 hospitals in the US in heart disease, and they left me, someone who has very little interest in heart disease, to do calls by myself that night as well as 7 other night that month.

I didn't know whether it was a football game, or a crash in the stock market or another speech by Bush, but we had a lot of people coming in with heart attacks.

All patients did well, except for one who came in unconscious and we sent him to the ICU. He was on plenty of medications and it didn't look good for the old fellow.

I was there at 3 am when I asked his nurse to draw a blood test .

She came back with the result.

I wanted to ask about the pH. The pH is a reflection of how much acid there is in the blood, which is a bad sign.

I don't know if this happens to you, but whenver I am really really tired and stressed out, my accent suddenly thickens out and my English becomes a bit difficult to undertsand. I never had a problem with "P" and "B" , but I don't know what happened that night.

"What's the bicarb?" I asked
"12"
"Ah, 12! That's too low!"
then I wanted to ask what the P-H was. The P-H.
"How about a PH?"
I think the (previously) nice black nurse heard something else.

"What did you say?" she asked, and she looked furious.
I was thinking to myself what made her angry.

She looked at me really mad, and said, "I'm asking (aksing) you, what did you say?"

I couldn't answer and was wondering what the hell did I say, I only remember asking about the P-H.

She went ,"Did you just call me a Biaaatch?"
As I kept silent, she got became more furious, "You're calling me a biaaatch, ha?"

"No I said P-H"!
"you're saying it again, you're calling me a Biaatch!"
"No,No, No!"

The last thing a doctor should do is make a nurse angry. If you did, all the nurses in the hospital will hate you and make your life miserable. I was ready to kneel on my knees and kiss each of her feet separately.


Then another nurse, at the end of the hallway who was never even close to us came by and whispered in her ears that was well-heard, "honey I heard him, I think he called you a bitch".


The patient inside looked very critical so I had to go inside and try to keep him alive. I didn't hear from that nurse or anyone else since then and it's been more than 2 years now, the time limit during which she can complain for sexual harrasment has passed, yahoooo!

I just learned that when you think your night is not going well, it can get much worse. Also, you should work on your Ps and Bs you pastards.