grief

my patient who we had to send to the icu earlier this week came back to the wards last night for comfort care. by some oversight, she didn't come back to our team. last saturday, the last time we were on-call, i admitted her for shortness of breath. she had metastatic stage IV lung cancer. i meant to stop by today to say hello. but i didn't really know what to say. we're on-call again tonight. as i wrote my admission orders and notes for my 2 new patients, i heard wailing in the hallways. i had the sinking feeling it was for her. may she rest in peace...

P.S. So to escape the wailing in the 4th floor, I went back to our team room. Both computers there were in use so I headed to the 5th floor. The door was locked. So I went up one more flight to the 6th floor. A few minutes later, I saw my intern and resident go in one of the patient rooms. I heard more wailing. Another patient has died... The intern was crying too, the team who was taking care of that patient did not mention that he is dying.. One more patient is not doing so well. Yeah, it's one of those nights..