It is nice to just sit.

I haven’t had a patient in almost an hour, and my worklist is empty.  This is the first time this has happened in weeks.  Probably months.  It feels good, and I know I’m jinxing it by pointing it out, but I’ll take that risk.  I needed a day like today before the excitement of tomorrow.

I’m sitting at my laptop with a blanket over my hands as I type.  The clicking of the keyboard is strangely muffled, as though I may be losing my hearing, and not all of the sounds are coming through.  There is an A/C vent just over the workstation in my Ultrasound room, and the heat has been disabled in here.  Most days, I don’t have enough time to worry about how cold I am because it’s so busy, but today… Today I am wearing two pairs of scrub pants, and a long sleeve shirt under my scrubs.  That’s because I know how cold I usually am in here.  I frequently have trouble typing my annotations on my studies from the stiffness of my fingers freezing.  The ultrasound room used to be the “warm” room.  My co-workers would come back here to thaw out, because I could keep it toasty in here.  It used to be called the “Easy-bake” oven.  I used to be called Cupcake.

Now it’s just cold.

In two and a half hours, I get to drive home.  In three and a half hours, I get to start packing, and hope that I’m able to fall asleep for my 3:30 alarm to get up and go to the airport.  At 9:30 tomorrow, pacific time, I will be seeing my mom and dad for the first time in over a year.  I’m so very excited, it nearly warms me. 

Nearly.