On-Call

I was more than happy to hand over my pager last year when I quit my job. That little annoying sound box prevented me from running errands in traffic packed Tyler and kept me up more nights than none.  When I arrived onboard the Africa Mercy, I was unaware of how much we rely on pagers to find people on the ship. First day in Benin, I had the duty nurse pager, that is God's sense of humor. So last Saturday, I was one of the three OR nurses on-call for the day. For the pager handover, I usually answer the door with one eye open and then return to watching my eyelids. However, this time I couldn't fall back asleep so I ventured to the dining room for breakfast. One of my friends, Missy, was shocked to see me up early. She wanted me to go to the hospitality center to visit patients with her. As I was explaining my sad excuse of being on-call, Luke, one of our coworkers overheard and graciously volunteered to take the pager for me. I love that there is a different and willing attitude when it comes to helping each other out with the pager when you work with missionaries. So a group of us gathered our supplies and walked to the hospitality center for the day. When we got there all the patients were enthralled in a Nigerian movie playing. Of course, there are always babies to hold and kids to entertain. I broke out the coloring books and stickers, Tracy had balloon animals to make, and Liv had press-on tattoos. What a great day until I had to retrieve the pager when I got back to the ship. :)