Growl.

How many nurses does it take to change a lightbulb?
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ONE, to call the intern!

Oh, fuck you.

In case you hadn't noticed, I'm the person that calls you to let you know when you've fucked something up. If your patient has a critically-high potassium level because you've been supplementing them out the wazoo without requesting more levels, I am the person who catches it.

I'm the person who wakes you up, sweetie, before your attending walks into the station and justifiably fries your ass.

I'm the person who holds your patient's hand while she dies, then spends thirty minutes trying to locate you because your department can't get the call schedules right. When you do finally show up, I'm the person who shows you how to fill out the paperwork you should've been familliar with months ago.

I'm the person your attending yells at when *you* fuck up. If you write an order that doesn't comply with our chemo protocol, and forget to have your attending clarify it and cosign it, I am the one who will have to endure thirty seconds of blasting in the nurses' station from your overfed, undercivilized boss.

I'm the person who, just last week, paged you a total of forty-eight times over the course of eight hours about a patient who was hemorrhaging from an incision. I had, of course, already contacted your attending and had the problem dealt with by somebody else...because you had slept through your beeper on your on-call weekend.

I do an amazing amount of scutwork, from running to get you lumbar drain kits to holding your hand when you're doing a procedure you've never done before. I'm the one who keeps that patient with the undiagnosed tremors and dyskinsesia still in my arms while you do a lumbar puncture. I catch your errors more than once a day, thus saving both your license and mine. I change your dressings for you when you don't have time and correct your orders when you don't know that a) Xanax doesn't come IV or b) the dosage of phenytoin for a loading dose. Your patients weep and vent and rage to me so that they can keep a calm face to you, and maybe you won't then think less of them.

I am, in short, a nurse.

I may need you to change a lightbulb, but you apparently need somebody else to wipe your ass.