Sunday 4 March 2007

The ward night out


Last night, I went out on a night out in the Town with the nurses from the ward. I must confess that I was a bit wary about going out drinking because, in my experience, I’ve found that when nurses get drunk together they get totally wasted and crazy stuff happens.

I got the train from The City (where I live) to The Town (where I work and where we were going out) and got in just before 10. A couple of phone calls later and I manage to track them down. It turns out that they’d been drinking since 4 o’clock and were totally off their faces. It was pretty obvious that there was going to be very little in the way of meaningful conversation going on, so I had little choice but to get pissed. It actually ended up being a really fun night withoads of banter with random bods and lots of laughing and dancing.

At about midnight, James, one of the other doctors from the ward, pulls me to one side and tells me that Anna, one of the nurses, was coming on to him. Problem was that she was in a long-term relationship and he asked me what I thought he should do.

I know the whole “doctors and nurses” thing is such a cliché, but seriously, it’s so true. Just about every male doctor I know has shagged at least one nurse, you could call it a perk of the job. For me personally, it’s been two – one as a house officer and one as a medical student. It would have been more but for my views about sleeping with people you work with, I’ll explain my opinion in a later entry.

Anna’s pretty cute and I definitely would, so after giving James that caveat that I’m a bit of a badboy I said:

“Look, she obviously really likes you and from what I hear, she’s liked you for a while. I don’t think the fact that she has a boyfriend is really relevant here, she’s a grown woman and she’s capable of making her own decisions. Personally, I think it takes a lot of guts to say what she just said to you, and personally I don’t think that I’d EVER say that to someone, no matter how much I liked them. I think what’s important is that you decide what YOU want to do. I think if you’re honest with yourself about whether or not you want to go out with her, or shag her or kiss her, then you can be honest with her about it. And I think she deserves that honesty whatever happens”

Surprise, surprise, half an hour later, James and Anna are swapping spit on the couch in the corner of the club. I think things would have gone further if Anna’s boyfriend hadn’t arrived to pick her up about an hour later. I wonder what she’ll say about the whole thing on Monday. Stuff like this makes work so much more interesting!

All in all, I had a surprisingly fun, if a tad cheesy night out, and I’ll definitely go along to the next one – and next time, I’ll start at 4 o’clock!

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