The Dungeon
As a medical clerk, my first hospital rotation was in a pediatric wing of a government hospital near Pasig. I call the place “The Dungeon”, precisely because it’s on the basement of a hospital, near the morgue.There, I had the privilege to work with 3 other clerks, two were from my school, and one from another school, more prestigious and more expensive than mine was. Of Course the school does not at all matter when you are on outside hospital rotation.Except perhaps when doing dirty jobs, those from expensive school are exasperating.
Anyway, in that rotation, we have devised three sleeping arrangements The last to go on shift will sleep first on the “bat cave” as we fondly call it. Those two who will go on shift next will be onthe benches and spare cabinets. The one on first shift will not be seating at all more so sleep. I like the bat cave. It’s acually just a dark storage room for mops, brooms and the like, with a dilapidated office table to sleep on. It can accommodate half of the body of a normal adult. It accommodates almost all of me, which is just great :)
On the benches, any patient’s relative can knock on the back of your head and ask for you to reinsert a young patient’s IV. I hated it, because, I was never a good shooter when only one-forth of my brain is left awake, and the rest have conked out on me as always. So, just when I am aiming for a vein, I’d get an artery. And when I’m aiming for an artery, the wrong vessel would get in the way.
This is also the most depressing hospital I’ve ever been in. The place is just as sick as the people in it. The corridor is full of bedless patients, and the smell…, you will not forget the smell. It is a stench of suffering, misery, sadness and poverty all woven into one ghastly metaphor. I was never absent and was never late during these rotations, not because I enjoyed it, but because I never wanted to have the need to come back for completion. The entire scenario of death and suffering is a nightmare amidst the bright daylight outside.Besides, time does not exist inside this place. There is no day. It’s always just a series of rotating medical clerks,interns, residents, occasional consultants, and nurses. Most patients no longer expected to see another day beyond this tragic house of sufferings, as dilapidated as their dreams are, and as sick as their frail bodies had always
been. To have a healthy life outside this dungeon seem so far fetched as of the moment
