Judgey AF

I am working on uploading all my blog posts I had on my previous site, so please bare with me. Newbies, welcome to my type of story, and those who already have seen my old stuff, feel free to laugh again or I mean, I guesssss you can just skip it. Up to you. Again, just grateful you're even here. (:

I work as a Labor and Delivery nurse in New York City. Long story short, I got into nursing partly because my entire mom’s side of the family is Filipino but also partly because I didn’t think I had enough time to play division 1 volleyball in college and be able to make all my clinical and lecture classes if I were to become a Physical Therapist (which obviously could’ve been possible if I could make the nursing clinical and lecture classes, stupid). Anyways, my workplace is a locked unit due to the possibility of any type of child abduction from the crazy people who think that they can and will steal a baby from a patient who has just spent around 9 months carrying it. So I come up the elevators, swipe my badge to enter the unit and clock in. I walk towards the double door entrance of the unit and see a non-pregnant caucasian woman with full blown dreadlocks dressed in black sweat pants that seemed to be her pajamas from the night before, paired with a basically see through white t-shirt beneath a beaten black zip up and a birthing ball sitting between her feet aka a doula. I automatically curse in my head assuming we have a birth center patient on the floor. I press the button to open the doors, pass by the woman and give a slight head nod with a half smile because it’s possible that her client will be my patient for the next 12 hours of my shift. I change into my burgundy sterile scrubs and go through my “getting ready to want to kill myself” routine. This includes snapping my badge on the v-neck of my scrub top, putting three particular pens in my pocket, filling up my hydrojug with half hospital ice (the gnocchi shaped kind also known as the ice provided in the athletic training room, for my athletes) and half filtered water, and finally grabbing two slips of paper around the size of… well paper that was ripped into four smaller papers. I look up at the central board that displays all of our patients and see that I luck out with an assignment that does not include the patient in the birth center, I give myself a round of applause and take a bow, on the inside of course. I don’t want to look crazy. Shift change huddle begins, and the charge nurse starts to give a brief explanation of what is going on with each patient on the floor. In the corner of my eye, through the two small rectangular paned windows, the ONLY non wooden part of the doors parting the nursing station and the waiting room, I spy the doula with each of her hands cupped around the outer edge of her eyes peering through, attempting to either see what the huddle is about or looking for the patient herself. I thank God once again for the assignment that I was given. I hear footsteps come down the hall towards the double wooden doors and realize its the husband of the patient because he motions toward the doula to come in. We briefly stop huddle as they pass because it could be a potential violation of patient privacy and watch the two go back towards the birth center. They rush past me because I'm standing at the very lateral end of staff listening and I get a whiff of something. Oh my god, it can’t be. A skunk-ish, grungy, earthy smell so strong I rubber neck at them. It’s her, the doula! She was smoking weed! I’m gonna get her kicked out. I mean it couldn’t have been the husband of the patient. He walked past me the first time and I didn't smell it. Huddle finishes a few minutes later and I am told that the nurse that I’m getting report from is charting in the birth center. Perfect location! I’ll talk to the nurse about it and see if she noticed the smell too. I talk to a few other nurses who were standing next to me during huddle and discuss my assumption. A day shift nurse states she smelled it too and fully supports me getting the doula kicked out. A night shift nurse says she didn’t smell it personally but says “I could use some right about now”, chuckles and goes about getting report on her patients. I walk towards the back to get report and smell it again. This time, no one. Theres no one around me. Maybe its the residual of when she walked down the hall recently. I sniff up and down my scrubs, checking if maybe somehow it came out with my scrubs from the scrub vending machine. Convinced it couldn’t be me, I proceed into the birth center spotting the day shift nurse seated at the computer, charting away. I plop down in the chair beside her and express my concern, “Kris, is this birth center patient yours? I think the doula has been smoking weed. I smelled it when she was walking past me.” Kris shoots me a look of question, furrowing her eyebrows and tilting her head 45 degrees, “No, I don’t have her but I kind of smell it back here too. It wasn't here before you came back.” “Yeah! She just walked back here with the husband of the patient! I knew it!” “Yeah, but it’s like way too close.The smell is really strong.” Getting excited with the thought of helping out a fellow nurse by getting rid of an extra body in the delivery room, I stand and exclaim, “Let’s go tell the charge nurse and maybe we can get her out of here!” Kris was still unconvinced, she pulled out the trashbin, looked underneath the counter and started pulling drawers open to ensure it wasn’t in the birth center nursing station. The smell turns potent, I look behind me to see if I spot the doula walking past or opening the door of the birth center. Nothing. Just me, standing, and Kris looking through the last of the drawers. She checks under her shoes, I glance at mine, mimicking her and I realize I didn't change into my work shoes. I look under my shoes out of curiosity and of course... a joint stuck to the bottom of my shoe.