The Six Degrees Of Transport

***ALL NAMES, INCLUDING THE NAME OF THE HOSPITAL, HAVE BEEN CHANGED IN ORDER TO KEEP ALL IDENTITIES PROTECTED***

The following is the breakdown of each transporter at the hospital I currently work at…which we’ll call Princeton Plainsborough Teach Hospital (That’s the hospital from the show HOUSE, but whatever).

1) Ray: Comedian at heart, this guy has been working at PPTH for two years. Part time, he comes in at 4 PM and works until 8 PM, transporting patients to and from various appointments and tests with extra care, going as quickly or as slowly as he feels needed in order to keep the patient comfortable. Ray continues to entertain the staff with his mimes and his quick witt. He is charming, entertaining, and his sense of humor lacks any impure thoughts. Ray is a huge asset to our team.

2) Christen: Sweet, (seemingly) innocent, health conscious, and always looking flawless, Christen brings a light quality to her job as she takes her patients all over the hospital. She has a way of lifting the spirits of the people she transports without even saying a word. Her ability to make people smile is one of her best qualities, and I think she is an integral part of our team.

3) Alissa: Sassy, spunky, and open about what she thinks, Alissa keeps her transportees entertained. Able to keep a conversation going as long as she needs to, Alissa not only makes the trip fun for her patients, she makes it fun for herself. Her patients benefit from a therapy they are unaware of, talk therapy. Alissa makes her patients feel good, and that’s a great element of our group of transporters.

4) Mark: Quiet and reserved, Mark comes across as a shy guy, but when I myself am transporting patients, he knows about half of them by name! Mark is very interactive with the people he transports, and it shows when they recognize him in the halls. He is almost always calm, and he is always wonderful to the patients. Mark transports safely and smoothly, and that is a huge compliment to the community of Transport.

5) Jessie: Jessie is the glue that holds the Transporters together. He sits at a desk on a daily basis and takes calls all day. That’s his entire job. Jessie has a lot of patience, and while he does do a couple other things, he can write faster than anyone else I know. He takes down the dictation of when, where, and how we (the transporters) are supposed to go, usually in a time frame of less than thirty seconds. Without Jessie, transport would fall apart.

I have saved the best for last. Sorry, everyone above, but you should know me by now, and while I love all of you, I have created my strongest bond with:

6) Diablo (Like the name change, buddy?): This guy is crazy, but in the most awesome way possible. He has a way of making almost EVERYONE he happens to be around either smile or (in most cases involving myself) laughing histerically. He is fantastic with the patients and he gets them where they need to go without hesitation. His speed is unmatched and his gracefulness when pushing some of the most complicated runs is mind-blowing. Diablo is probably the best transporter PPTH has, and without him, I don’t think we’d be nearly as efficient as we are. Diablo is, in my opinion, our MVP.

Technically, there should be a 7th description, but I’m not going to write a paragraph on myself and try to figure out what I do well as at my job.

These six degrees of Transport are the six reasons why PPTH functions so well when it comes to getting patients to the places they need to go. With the absence of any of these six people, Transport would not run as well as it does. These people are fantastic, and I feel privelidged to be able to work with such fine people.

A new year, a new beginning.

Last night, my parents and I spent the evening with family friends Devin* and Gracie* and their 4 1/2 month baby girl, Sadie*. I thought I was going to be bored shitless, but here’s how the night played out:

My parents and I left our house and I applied my make-up in the back of the car. After I finished, I shut my eyes and kind of tuned out everything, almost falling asleep. My mom let me know when we had gotten to our destination and I got out of the car with my purse, laptop, and the bottle of Chardonnay we’d brought and we walked to the front door.

Now you might be wondering why I brought my laptop. That’s rather rude, you may say, but don’t you worry. I didn’t open it once. I brought it because I thought I’d be bored and I thought I’d be able to catch Neil Lambert’s live feed of his brother Adam’s performace, but I wasn’t.

We rang the doorbell and Devon answered the door. We greeted him, handed him the bottle of red wine we had brought as well as the Chardonnay, and walked in. That’s when I saw them: The two cutest dogs I’d seen in a long time. I don’t remember exactly what breed they were, but since Devon likes Lord Of The Rings, they were named Frodo and Sam. Frodo was the boy dog; black and kind of quiet. Sam was the girl dog. Her fur (which felt much more like human hair) was about the same color as Samwise Gamgee from the movie. She was much more energetic than Frodo, so the two dogs’s personalities seemed to fit with their names.

The next faces I saw were Gracie’s and Sadie’s. We greeted Gracie and I immediately focused all of my attention on Sadie. She is quite possibly the cutest baby I’ve ever seen. She is 4 1/2 months old and she is about the size of a 6 or 8 month old. She’s already got the adorable apple cheeks, and her little chin is so tiny compared to them it’s just irresistable.

At first, we couldn’t really get a smile out of Sadie. Then, after about 15 minutes, she let out a HUGE burp. NOW she was smiling. Gracie let me hold her and I couldn’t believe how heavy she was! 16 pounds of cuteness!!! Quite a workout for my arms, let me tell you, especially since she’s very mobile and kept squirming in my arms.

She started out by smiling, a lot. I couldn’t stop smiling back at her. The funniest thing about her is that she looks you in the eyes already, and it’s as if she can read what you’re thinking. She’s going to be very smart, I can tell. After maybe an hour, I was holding her again. This time, I looked at her, and she smiled at me, and stuck out her tongue. It was so cute that I had to hand her over to my own mother so I could laugh histerically. it was in MY mother’s arms that she first cooed in front of us. All I could say to that was “AAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

It was finally time for dinner, so Gracie put Sadie in her little…well, I don’t know exactly what you’d call it, but it wasn’t a bouncer, rocker, or chair. It was kind of like a cup that held her; like if she lay down in a big, humongous leaf, only this was pink, and Sadie started bouncing in it. Sadie kept a nice little drum beat for us all throughout dinner with her bouncing. It was so funny! And every now and then, she’d have her say in the conversation: “Aaaaaahhh! Oooooaaaaaaaaawhaaaaaaaaaaa.” Gracie would talk back to her: “Oh, really? WOW!” I laughed.

What I didn’t realize was exactly WHAT we were having for dinner. All I saw were three pots with oil in them and color-coded skewers. That’s when I was told we were having fondue. Fondue!! I’d never had it before. I was expecting cheese and bread, but I was wrong. It turns out, I knew very little about fondue until last night.

We sat down and everyone started passing the raw meat around. I took a couple pieces of raw steak, raw chicken, and raw sausage (can sausage be raw?) and passed the plates on. Next came the vegetables, so I got some broccoli. Then there was the bread, but we had been given side dishes with oil and our choice of spice to dip our bread in, so I knew it wasn’t the kind of fondue I was expecting.

I watched as Gracie was first to put a piece of raw steak in one of the oil pots. After about a minute, she removed it, and what I saw amazed me. The raw piece of meat Gracie had put into the pot of oil had come out not a minute later comepletely cooked!! Well, I can tell you, I took all three of my red color-coded skewers, stuck meat on them and put them in the pot. To spare you any more boring details, the night went on like this for a good hour and a half.

We finished dinner and my mom and I helped Devon clean up while Gracie made a bottle to go feed Sadie. Then I went into the living room where Gracie and Sadie were and I received a very messy smile from a very adorable Sadie. I giggled and sat down. Sadie had eaten most of her bottle, so Gracie went up and got Sadie’s pajamas. Before she got up, Gracie handed Sadie to me.

I was talking to her when my dad came out. I asked him if he wanted to hold her, and he said yes as long as he could sit down. He sat next to me and I handed him Sadie. At first she looked at him with a face that said “Who the hell are you?” Then my dad started talking to her and she smiled that tongue-like smile and talked back with her only way of communicating, ‘Ooohs’ and ‘Aaaahs.’

Devon and my dad took the dogs out for a walk, and Gracie, my mom and myself went to say goodnight to little Sadie. Her pajamas were a onezie, with little bunny feet at the bottom. Her room was light green with a pink carpet. The crib was black. It was a calming room. My mom and I said goodnight to Sadie and went downstairs. Seconds after we got to the bottom of the stairs, my dad and Devon got back. Apparently, it was raining too hard to take the dogs for a walk.

At about 11:30 PM, Devon and Gracie had set up the fondue pot again, but this time it had…CHOCOLATE. That’s right. CHOCOLATE. They passed around bananas, strawberries, rice krispies, marshmallows, lady fingers, and oranges. Let’s just say…if I’m not officially a diabetic now, it’ll be a miracle.

At 10 minutes to midnight, we went out into the living room once again and turned on the TV. We didn’t want to watch Dick Clark suffer through the night, so we turned on Carson Daly. He’s a bit of a prick, but there was nothing else on. We got really excited because he was about to show Green Day perform “East Jesus Nowhere,” but then they cut to commercial. We were all so pissed off, we changed the channel. At 3 minutes to midnight, we turned Carson back on. We watched the ball drop, said “HAPPY NEW YEAR!” and drank Champagne. Then, Carson cut to Green Day again. This time, they played the whole song, “21 Guns.” I sang happily along. Next thing I know, we were home. I must’ve slept on the way home. I walked inside, brushed my teeth, took my shoes off, got under the covers, turned on my Adam Lambert album, and went to sleep.

I woke up this morning dressed in my white wifebeater, black button-down dress shirt, black HOT TOPIC pants, and black ‘hardware’ belt. At first I didn’t understand, but then I realized I was just so tired that I passed out in what I had been wearing.

Well, dear readers, that’s how I celebrated the new year, so I hope my first blog of the new year wasn’t too boring, even though I know it was pretty much bullshit. I’m sorry it wasn’t more entertaining. Anyway, I hope you all have a healthy, prosperous new year, and I promise I’ll write much better blogs this year. It’s one of my new year’s resolutions.

Much love, hate, and everything in between.

*These names have been changed for the protection of the people’s identities.