Pursuit of happiness (nightmare)

I ran around this morning like a chicken with its head cut off.

I had gotten to the hospital early - it was my first hospital day with a new attending, and she wanted me to round on all seven of her postpartum patients. I had just finished visiting all the patients, and was sitting down to write all of their notes, when I realized that I had lost my pager.

Lots of colorful words tricked out in asterisks flew through my head. $%$#!@! $%#^ $#@$! My pager is my lifeline. It tells me about my patients, tells me where I'm supposed to be, and I had paged myself reminding me what my pin number to get scrubs were. So without my pager, I would have no idea when my attending arrived, where she wanted to meet me, and I wouldn't even be dressed to go into the OR.

So I freaked out. Naturally.

I ran back to see all of my patients, thinking that my pager must have fallen off my pants when I was checking incisions or assessing for swollen legs, but I came up empty. I retraced all my steps, thinking that perhaps as I was running through the halls, maybe my pager got jostled out of my pockets. Nothing. I went back to my locker, hoping that maybe I just never took it out of my bag. It wasn't there.

By that time, I was ten minutes late for morning report. I walked in the door to find out that my clerkship director - the person who basically decides my grade - was on service. They had already discussed my patients, so my getting there at 5am to round now seemed ridiculous.

Rounds finished, and I emailed my attending to let her know that I was a terrible and irresponsible student who had lost her pager, and if she could please call my cell phone instead, it'd be very much appreciated? She texted me back immediately, being very nice and understanding, saying that stuff happens, and that she would meet me in the OR at 9am, and gave me her own pin number so that I could get scrubs. Crisis averted.

Then, I figured I ought to page my own pager with my cell phone number, so that just in case a Good Samaritan happened to come across it, they could call me and I could get it back.

I hit the 'send' button, and then one of the five pagers on my clerkship director's belt starting buzzing. She glanced down to read it.

"THIS ISN'T MY PAGER. WHO'S MICHELLE?!" she bellowed. Oh crap - she was my Good Samaritan?? Given all that I'd heard about her, if I had known she was the one who found my pager (inadvertently or not), I probably would have cut my losses and paid $120 to just pay for a new one.

"Oh, that must be my pager...I dropped it earlier...." I replied back meekly.

"SPEAK UP!" she said. "THIS IS YOURS?"

"Yes, ma'am," I replied, trying to speak up, but still quivering in fear.

"KEEP A BETTER EYE ON YOUR BELONGINGS!" She threw it down on the table, yelled at me some more about things that weren't even related to me (or my pager), and then stormed out of the room presumably to go take care of some patients. I scurried over and put my pager back in my pocket, hoping that the earth would open up and swallow me whole.

It's amazing how some attendings can be so super nice, and others can make you feel like you're stupider than mud.