I just wanted to hide under covers today

I was about forty minutes late to my volunteer shift in the emergency department today. My boss eventually picked me up from the BART station because the shuttle wasn't running and I didn't have cash to ride the bus. I had contemplated just turning around, swiping my Clipper card into the turnstile and making up some excuse about it being a holiday, and going back to bed. Well, it is a holiday, but hospitals don't take vacations, do they?

My boss showed up in the parking lot in his car from the 1970s. It has vinyl seats with no seat belts ("That won't be a problem, will it?" my boss asks. I hang onto the door, which he also advises against). The gear shift is a straight metal rod with an 8 ball at the end and the dashboard has five square buttons on it, I'm guessing as some sort of use-to-be radio. The speedometer only goes up to 50 mph. His four-year-old son is strapped in a car seat in the back (at least he's secure!) and shyly looks away when I say hi. It was actually a pretty fun ride. I was grateful that my boss just happened to be heading to work at 11:20am.

It starts to drizzle when we walk into the building.

I apologize profusely to the trainee whose time I've wasted, and promise that things will go more smoothly now that I'm here. But I can't really say that for sure, the emergency department is a chaotic melange of emotions and attitudes and blood and injuries and smells and things.

It's one of those days that I have a hard time dealing with the messiness of other people. I hold my breath as I stooped to help an elderly homeless patient change out of his soiled pant bottoms and coax a clean pair of hospital-issued scrubs over his underwear-less crotch. A resident who passes by said, "Mmm it smells great in here," and then gave me a sympathetic look as I finally got one foot into the pant leg. Halfway through I wonder why in the world the nurse hadn't asked my male counterpart to do this instead. I tell myself, this is what Jesus did, right--wash people's dirty feet? Clothe people's naked bottoms? These are the sort of feel-good things that people in clean, safe, comfortable situations say. But I'm pretty sure those people have never had their heads perilously close to a homeless person's gnarled, foul-smelling genitalia before.

I roll my eyes when a nurse I'd never even met before snatched a patient's food tray out of my hands and told me to hurry up and take her patient upstairs which was so urgent I'm not sure what was keeping her capable, payroll-enjoying self from doing it pronto. On any other day, I would have cheerfully smiled and said, I'd be happy to! But today I had to bite my tongue to swallow my fighting words, which would have been spat out so viciously that I probably would have also burst out in tears afterward. Good thing I had a trainee next to me, observing my every move.