It isn’t as if I meant to drop the residency phone in the toilet.
I suppose it wouldn’t have been such a big deal if the phone wasn’t used – daily – by one of the residents. The $700 pricetag made my little ker-plunk a problem too. Incidentally, I hadn’t actually used the toilet when the phone fatefully slipped off my scrubs waistband and plunged – almost gleefully, free at last!, free at last! – into the shimmering sewer water.
Frantically I pulled my ridiculously expensive phone out of it’s newfound conical water park and dried it off. I pushed the “power” button, and felt my heart sink as it made this warbly, buzzing, hacking sound and blinked hieroglyphics across the screen.
At this point, I figured I had two options. Option B was to take the whole thing apart and see if I could “fix” the phone. This choice was high-risk, given my lifetime record of similar undertakings. Alternatively, option A was to report the issue to the entire residency program.
Option A was basically a bill for 700 bucks and not-insignificant public humiliation, so I went with option B. If I’m gonna buy the thing, I reasoned, I might as well get to take it all apart and play with the pieces first.
Stealthily, I stole off to a deserted desk in a little-used wing of the OB ward. Along the way, I picked up the only tool I could find – a skinny screwdriver that must have been a foot long (weird?). There was no time to lose. I was able to position the monstrous screwdriver-lever-robotic shuttle arm tool I’d found to remove every screw I could find in the back of the phone. Instantly, little metal things sproinged in various directions…and water poured out. Hope of a quick fix was fading. Soon I had circuit boards (wet, sparking), rubber buttons, batteries, wires and speakers (also damp) spread out in front of me. As I carefully dried off each piece, suddenly the thing RANG. Of all the things I’d disconnected, apparently the battery wasn’t one of them. I picked up the earpiece by a red wire soldered to the back of it,
“HI, THIS IS DOCTOR ANKENEY!” I yelled toward the microphone, which was laying across the desk over by the rubber buttons. The speaker wire was impolitely zapping my finger with little jolts of electricity with every syllable of the caller’s voice.
“Wrrble stan fogggisth?”
“YEAH SURE, THAT’S FINE. I’LL, UH, SIGN THOSE ORDERS…LATER.” I said, going with the most vague and common reply I could think up.
“Caspppn yozzzzz tozzssandp?”
“OK! SOUNDS GREAT! THANKS FOR CALLING. BE THERE SOON!”
Clickbuzzzzzzz…..POP.
Quickly, I touched the screwdriver to the spot on the circuit board where I thought the power button usually sat. The phone, now becoming a sentient being in my head – the HAL of hospital cell phones – took a rest. Then my pager rang, and I knew the game was up. They were looking for me. Thinking fast, I swept the tiny screws and buttons into the inner pocket of my scrubs. Then I stuffed the battery, wires and circuit boards into my back scrubs pocket, slid the screwdriver into my sock and headed back to the ward.
Although I thought the phone was off, apparently it wasn’t. It kept shocking me through the pocket of my scrubs. “So, when did the bzzzt!, spAZMs start!?” I asked my patient, trying to discreetly shift away from the electrical arc lancing my backside every few minutes. “Oh. Sorry. Did you tell me thbzzzt!AT! already?”
Eventually, I was able to break away, and I managed to reassemble the phone. I even got the sproingy things back in place, much to my great pride. Eyeing the thing suspiciously, I tried calling it…and it worked! I could even almost understand myself on the other line.
Residency, for me, is so often like this. I drop things. I break things. I lose stuff and forget things. I write orders but don’t copy them into my chart notes…or vice versa. I feel like I’m always off-balance; always picking up pieces, frantically stuffing them into my pockets and then acting “normal”. Maybe everybody feels this way, not just residents. I guess this is just how life is, much of the time. But I always feel good when I get something right, even if it takes a little pluck and savvy to put it all together.
And the phone? Hey, I fixed that problem. Handed it over to the incoming resident when my shift was done.
“Thing’s startin’ to sound funny,” I said. “I gave it a good rub-down with alcohol, though, so at least you know it’s clean.”
