Auld Lang Syne

While everyone else was out busy partying, screeching Auld Lang Syne in an off-key fashion and watching the blazing fireworks the night before last, I was getting ready for another day at work. Bravely navigating the eeriely deserted streets of the city in the wee hours of the morning seems to be the bane of people in my career ( damn working on public holidays! ). Somehow sharing the toast of the new year with a bunch of sedated guys just isn't as much fun.

Don't usually make any resolutions since I don't want to end up berating myself for regularly breaking them :)

Unsurprisingly, the hospital is always hopping this time of the year. Turned out to be quite an eventful day as well since there were a slew of frantic admissions ranging from tipsy alcoholics who imbibed a little too much of their favourite brew ( and ended up slamming themselves against an unmoving lamppole ) to the ubiquitous Mat Rempits who just had to join in on the grisly New Year fun. Not forgetting the occasional poor ailing makcik who must have suffered an acute myocardial episode after being rudely awakened by the startling bang of fireworks - or even the ill-fated streetwalker with the bloodstained cough ( shades of the doomed songstress in Moulin Rouge anyone? ).

Is it any wonder that by about 6 this morning, I was literally walking into walls? To distract myself from imagining lovely images of sweet, sweet slumber, could have sworn that my mind had started to drift towards viciously cunning strategies of entraptment, imagining various deviant methods of decapitating my unfortunate foes with the sliding doors of the ICU airlock. Delicious fun but it still didn't keep me from nearly nodding off in front of the console.



Is it morning already?
Which is why I've always thanked god for the miraculous blessing of coffee. Sure, it's a temporary picker-upper but it works dammit, no matter how evanescent the effect. Kept me going for another half hour at least before I literally dropped comatose on a reasonably soporific horizontal surface somewhere.

Though I doubt I looked even half as fetching as the boy lounging on the couch above.

And realized when I woke up that I'd nearly slept through morning rounds! As did my equally exhausted colleague - who'd actually nodded off face-first on the computer console. Fortunately as we rushed out of our rooms crying we're late we're late - like the distressingly tardy rabbit in wonderland, we thankfully realized that our usually stern ( and amazingly prompt ) consultant wasn't wielding her whip that day. Somehow the spirit of the new year must have taken possession of her - actually she was quite amazed that we'd managed on our lonesome with the insane chaos that was the intensive care unit.