fire

And then there was the night the hospital caught on fire. . .

I work with amazing people. I know that, but with all the crises we face on a daily basis, nothing tested it quite as spectacularly as last night.

At 3 pm the power went out in nursery (and  the rest of the hospital). I was running mock resuscitations with my interns because we had discharged a record number of patients this week, and  we all assumed it would come back on sometime soon.  All my labs were back on our patients (which never happens), and I went to get check out on follow up everywhere else in the hospital for the night.

I walked home to gray clouds with points of golden light peaking out over the top to eat with my dinner with my family. Forty-five minutes later, after the sun had set, we got a text from Mardi, our medical director, asking for lights and lanterns because the hospital was in near complete darkness. The only remaining power was in the ICU and dental clinic.

Our nurses in Nursery had one light and had put the last remaining monitor with battery back up on the 1 1/2 lb baby in nursery who kept dropping her oxygen saturations unexpectedly. They cheered as they took the head lamps from me and set up one in the pumping room for mamas, one in the outside room for our babies with infections, and the other by their desk to continue working on their notes. No grumbling, just determination to make sure the patients under their care were okay.

I went to the pediatric ward that was in total darkness. I dropped off 2 headlamps and a reading light and they went to place an IV with the directed light. Everyone was still charting, drawing up medications with the beam of a pen light. My patients and their mamas were resting.

I took flashlights to 4 other wards and the pharmacy, and then the coverage nurse I was with got a call that power had gone out in the ICU. Our ventilators had about 1  hour of battery back up, but at that moment the countdown really began.

We reassured parents, moved backup vents into place, positioned bag valve masks, prayed the oxygen plant wouldn’t fail, and set up lanterns in the corners.  Everyone moved like a well oiled machine even though we had never run this drill, determined to make the best of unexpected difficulty.

At 9:05, I was on the ward figuring out how to change batteries to keep a light on in our monitored unit, and all the lights came on in an instant. We cheered. High fived. And I went room by room to check on the 85 pediatric patients in the hospital. Everyone was doing well, no worse for the electricity-free time, and I went home out the back entrance of the hospital

What I didn’t know, is that when the power went back on, a fire had started in our cafeteria. We heard sirens but thought it was a car alarm. Mardi called the fire truck down from RVA and 30 of our employees and doctors fought the fire with  a manually filled water hose and fire extinguishers. Others moved highly explosive gas tanks away from the blaze. And the amazing nursery nurses got oxygen tanks and evacuated the nursery. Last week we had 18 babies in nursery. Last night we only had 5, a number which almost never happens. Our tiny preemie saw the sky for the first time, and the mamas huddled together with worried smiles.

Within an hour, the last-minute-volunteer fire fighters had contained the blaze, but it had destroyed our cafeteria and waiting area.  The babies came back in and I helped to settle them in and sat in wonder at the craziness of the night.

And, as seems to happen more and more often, I was filled with gratitude in the middle of the insanity.

Gratitude that every one of our patients was okay after darkness and fire.

Gratitude that we had 5, not 20 babies in the nursery and that none of them needed critical phototherapy or continuous fluids.

Gratitude for back up batteries on ventilators and monitors.

Gratitude that labs had come back early that day.

Gratitude that when the oxygen went out briefly that we only had 4 patients that needed oxygen (instead of the 15-30 that normally do) and plenty of tanks to keep them safe through the outage.

Gratitude for the incredible nurses I work with everyday who continued to do their incredibly difficult job in total darkness – thankful for small lights instead of grumbling for the lack of big ones.

Gratitude for the heroes that ran to the fire to put it out and the ancient firetruck from RVA.

Gratitude for the mamas who asked how I was and cared for each other in such uncertainty.

Gratitude that today the hospital is open and caring for our patients well.

Gratitude for the medical director and division heads and engineering team that organized the unexpectedness and did trouble shooting in darkness.

Gratitude for the shining stars in the navy sky that lit my way home.

Gratitude that in the midst of chaos, I can see with certainty that He is there..