NIght duties

I have just finished three night duties. It is always such a lovely feeling on the first evening back to normal knowing that you don't have to prepare yourself for a night of sleeplessness. I am very much looking forward to getting into our freshly laundered bed soon.

The funniest thing happened on my second night. I went to have a break around 3am, which is a horrible time of morning when you started feeling cold, tired and nauseous. I mentioned that I hadn't seen two of the other nurses for a while. I was told that one of them had gone for a lie down and none of us knew about the other. I was a little concerned but not enough to be spurned into action. About 10 minutes later this nurse, who will remain anonymous, returned looking somewhat crumpled. When we asked what she had been up to she said she had fallen asleep on the toilet. Well, I have this theory that nurses use up all their sympathy quota on their patients so we laughed so hard we were all in tears. I said I couldn't wait for this story to filter out. The nurse in charge told me that nights were like stag or hen nights and whatever happened on them stayed with those who were present. I hasten to add that when the early staff arrived she blabbed within less than 5 minutes saying it was too good a story to waste. Needless to say we recounted the story on my third night with great hilarity.