New digs

It's a new month--a new rotation in a new town--and that was me you saw lugging groceries through the hospital tonight. I was headed to the second floor of an office building connected to the hospital. I've been assigned room #1 in a suite of five call rooms.

I get lost every time I go up there because it all looks exactly the same. Long, thin hallways. Beige walls, beige doors. No fake art or plastic fig trees with which to orient myself. The call suite is through the unmarked door across the hall from Quality Management. So...I'd be the chick wandering the halls of a medical office building after hours, dragging her granola bars, cereal, tea, and a gallon of milk, looking for Quality Management.

The other four call rooms aren't being used right now, so I've got the suite to myself. I can hear my mother now, WHAT? So you're staying all alone in some deserted office building? Is that even SAFE?

I don't know. I guess I'll find out.

My room is populated with leftover furniture. A chair that spent it's first twenty years in a waiting room--a Peds waiting room--it's coated with fruit juice stains and crushed up sugary bits; an end table that came with the chair; a ridiculously fancy, terribly outdated satin ottoman; the desk my friend Priscilla had in her bedroom when we were 12; and a twin bed with a plastic-lined mattress, in case I have an accident.

The worst thing about the place is the lighting. There are no lamps, just overhead fluorescent lights. And they buzz. Loudly. I may make a trip to Target tomorrow to buy a cheap desk lamp. Maybe I'll look for one with a ridiculous shade--something with sequins or feathers, perhaps--and then donate it to the room.

The suite doesn't get wireless, so right now I'm in the hospital cafeteria. The guy at the table next to me is reading this. Amazon says, "The author makes surrender to erotic romance suspense." Well, then. Good for you for having the balls to read that shit in public. Oh, and if I happen to see you wandering around my office building tonight, I'm going to mace your ass. No offense.