Like many cities, Wellington empties out during the Merryneum.
Scootering in to work this morning, the streets were virtually devoid of traffic.
“Gosh, it’s just like the zombie apocalypse!” I said to myself. But I was wrong, of course. What it was like was lockdown, which I should have known as I’ve personally experienced it in the last two years. Why would my brain have automatically leapt to the fictional scenario in preference? Human beings are weird.
We’re running several theatres over the festive period, for urgent and semi urgent cases. Pathology never sleeps, as they say. Well, they don’t but they should. I’m in one of the acute theatres today. One miscarriage, two swallowed foreign bodies, and a car crash victim. The latter is in a therapeutic drug induced coma in ICU. Talking to the family, the mother said I look very tired. Considering I’d probably had more sleep than anyone in the room, that took me by surprise. The nurse chipped in and said it was probably my scrub hat that didn’t fit properly and was an unfortunate colour that was making me look a bit hagged. Nice anyway that they were concerned about my wellbeing when they patently had bigger things on their mind. At least I’m proud that in the midst of this family tragedy, they don’t also have to be worrying about how they’re going to pay the medical bill, like they would in the US. What a bonkers system that is.