No Answer

A typical situation in the medical emergency room: the phone rings, I lift the receiver and say my name and function and then: silence. No answer. Nothing.

I repeat „hello, you can speak now“ but noone talks, only static crackles. But I also hear that the line is open. And sometimes I can hear somebody breathe.

And then I know from experience that this is usually someone who is trying to commit suicide. Maybe he’s just taken an overdose of sleeping pills. Maybe there’s a loaded gun next to him and I’m the last person he calls.

Usually I just ask bluntly: „Hello, how are you? Did you swallow any tablets? Do you need help? What’s your address?“

That’s usually when I hear the first sound. Often it is not clear talking but a muffled sigh or some crying, sobbing. Only later come the words. As soon as I get an address, I’ll send an ambulance to the place.

Once a lady told me that she had taken an overdose of tranquillizers to end her life and in that moment in the background you could hear a door open and her family come home.

She hang up.

Do one, see one...

On my surgical rotation, after two months in the outpatient clinic, I just had my first day in the emergency room. When I arrived, my colleague told me, that there'd be a lady waiting for an appendectomy.

Me: "who's going to do it?"
She: "You."
Me: "Who...?"
She: "You! It's your's."
I was laughing my head off. The last one I had seen was when I was in anesthesiology, about 4 years ago, and now I should do one myself. First I wanted to see one, so we arranged that my colleague did it.

Okay, now I know what it is about, I'm eagerly waiting for the next one...