For 19 years since residency, I have worked in one facility and one facility only. I have paced its halls and touched its walls, known every crack and heard every sound. I have seen life and death, laughed and cried there. And yet, I began to have a wandering eye…
Actually, I needed a little more immediate cash. I began to flirt with … locums!
So, after some phone calls, some furtive, flirtatious e-mails, some letters and forms, I found myself at Hospital #2! It was exciting and terrifying. We had never met in person, I had only read about it online.
I packed a bag, and left my town behind. When I saw Hospital # 2, I was intrigued. Not what I expected, but not bad. Certainly, available … if you know what I mean!
And after quick introductions, we spent the night together.
It wasn’t easy at first; the charting was odd, and the layout new. The staff nice and professional, but not the ones I knew so well. But it worked.
The next morning I left, rested and came back to do it all again! I felt an odd kind of liberation, like a new man. I had believed I could only practice in one place, that I would only be loved and accepted by one facility.
How wrong I was! I am a good doctor; and my skills go with me wherever I go; now matter how many times I cheat on my old, tried and true place of employment.
I’m home now; back to the routine. But with a new found sense of adventure. I feel free, I feel stronger … and I feel a little naughty (and a bit more financially stable) after my romp with Hospital #2.
Call me “hospital ho,” but I’m going back again next month.
Because with one son going to college next year, and a few more kids behind, with reimbursements down and partners unwilling, and unable, to give up shifts, I’ll keep cheating … and getting paid for it. As long as the money is good.
Edwin Leap is an emergency physician who blogs at edwinleap.com and is the author of The Practice Test.
