The post-it reads “29 ways to make it to the hospital”.
This is, of course, in the reference to the Marc Cohn song 29 Ways to Make it to My Baby’s Door. Yes, the same Marc Cohn who sang Walking in Memphis. Both songs are from his debut album in 1991.
Marc Cohn was the first bar concert I ever saw. I want to say it was in 1996 and in a small bar in the college town near where I grew up. Between 1993-1996
In the song, the protagonist lists off the ways he can make it to his baby’s door. Near the end of the song he sings that if she needs him real bad, he can find two or three more.
I know that people already think that I have an unnatural attachment to the hospital. I don’t, I swear. I do have an unnatural attachment to work, though I am trying my best to overcome it.
But I was thinking of mass casualty events when I wrote this post-it. Probably after one of the hospital shootings we’ve had nationally for a lot of years. Or being the second runner up to Oklahoma City when I was at Creighton. If that is even true, we talked about it in clinical just after it happened.
However, if the hospital needed me in a hurry, and they have, I could get to it, at night, in less than 5 minutes. This depends on hitting the lights right and no traffic.
However, I thought about it and counted the many ways I know how to get to the hospital during the day. I counted at least 10. And I only live 3 miles from the hospital.
Those are the 10 that I have found. There is probably more.
It just depends on how badly they need me.
And the traffic lights.
Dispatches from the Evening Shift 