*I'm more often accused of having a pair of testicles, but what's the point of metaphor if you can't usea bit of (poetic) license?**
Bollocks***. Phone again.
**That sentence sounded way better in my head. Way.
***More metaphor! If you want real ones, you'll have to either go for your own lap (and if it is your own lap, you don't need directions from me), or find a willing participant in your bollock-yearning.
Instead tonight's shift has been a little busy. Check that understatement. Awesome, yes?
To which you must say, "yes awesome", and keep any eye rolling, sneering or giggling at my expense to a discreet minimum or behind discreet camouflage. Such as a pot plant. Not very discreet, I suppose, but right now I would like a pot plant. A big one. I want to hug a tree and a pot plant would do in lieu.
My head is strange this morning (could you tell?). This is the eye in the cyclone and the wind is making noises outside. Any minute now one of the lovely lads from theatre will appear at the door and a house will fly past the window - and me without my Toto*. Since I'm also on the ground floor, I don't want to still be here if the building gets picked up and dropped - a Biochemistry department falling on my head would be no fun at all (Special Chems or not). Also the resulting cacophony from the alarms as the power failed would be very off-putting. Although I might get the satisfaction of ripping the most annoying one out of the wall. Perhaps I should hope for a trip to Oz. Then again, Microbiology is on top of Chemistry and they smell, so maybe not.
*Unless I name that cockroach from a few months ago.
Or no-one is coming. Perhaps no-one will come until the day staff arrive and I will have worried for nothing. It isn't fear, exactly; I've been doing this for too long to be afraid of what might come next*. It's bouncy feet. Being on the balls of your feet, ready to go. With nowhere to go.
* Although I can, without fail, make the blood drain out of my face by thinking of the phone call I hope I never receive: "Hi Blood Bank, I'm calling to notify you we have multiple casualties inbound; we need to activate the Disaster Protocol." Or simply: "Code Brown". Get your spare trousers out, kids!
Strange that a code brown (external) scares me a lot more than our lovely other colour-coded codes. I'll see your code brown with a code black (personal injury*), raise you a purple (bomb**) and a yellow (internal).
Yellow (grab your other spare trousers, kids!) is supposedly for internal emergencies, which may include:
- gas leaks,
- chemical and/or biological spills***
- failure of emergency power supply
- blah blah more obvious things
- illegal occupancy
By whom? The feral cats hiding next to the car park?
*Presumably without a lawyer. I was thinking this whole riff on code black actually being about compensation claims, but it just fell apart.
**Kaboom. Kaboom-boom-boom.
*** And, as it says in the flip-chart, in the event of a chemical, biological or radiation incident, the first thing you must do is cover your mouth.
Time for me to start up machines and whatever else. Probably a good thing, because I seem to have broken the circuit between my mouth and my brain - or at least what passes for taste in my head. Someone asked me a few minutes ago what what placenta accreta is - and according to me it's a quick trip to a hysterectomy, thanks for coming.
Since I'm being offensive, I may as well say I always thought the cabbage patch in hospitals was not a coma ward, but a slightly more inventive name for CABG patients (coronary artery bypass graft).
Time to faff. And tidy. Night.
