After waiting about twenty minutes for the taxi, I cancelled it and got into my car and headed out - against better judgement. I was so tired, when I came out the other side of the Graham Farmer Freeway tunnel, I thought I'd almost missed my turn off and quickly changed lanes, only to realise a few seconds later that my turn off was the next one. Damn! I was trying to navigate myself back on track when all of a sudden I realised the lights ahead of me were RED and there was a car travelling through the intersection. I slammed on my brakes and only just missed that car, but I ended up stalling my car in the centre of the intersection. I was in shock...and there was a cop car to my left watching it all unfold. I tried to reverse back to behind the white line but because I didn't realise I'd stalled the car, I thought I must have burst a tyre (I had hit a brick that was on the road on the way home from work yesterday and had been worried about my tyres since then). I got out of the car and all I could smell was burnt rubber. I walked around my car to check the tyres - the cops must have thought I was trying to make a run for it! Seeing that they were all intact, I looked over at the cops who were at this point still sitting at the lights watching me. I tried to sign to them where they wanted me to pull over, and they waved at me to get my car to the other side of the lights.
I got into the car, fumbled around to try to get it started again, and pulled over to the side. I rolled my window down and tried to take deep breaths.
The cop approached my window - I have to say here that he was about my age and drop dead gorgeous - he started asking if I was ok and what had happened. The next few minutes is all a blur to me. I managed to pull my lanyard from around my neck and show him my ID badge and explained to him that I had been paged to get to hospital for a patient who was in ICU with a gastrointestinal bleed and requiring urgent blood testing. I told him I was so tired and explained how I had tried to catch a taxi but that it did not show up and I needed to be at the hospital as there is a patient's care at stake. His partner came into view with a breathaliser and asked me if I had had anything to drink. I replied 'no' and blew negative. They took my license details down. Perhaps they saw how flustered and genuinely upset/tired I was so they told me they wouldn't hold me up if I had to get to the hospital urgently, but I should not be surprised to get an infringement notice in the mail. I told them I totally understood and they were really very understanding about it and told me that they would have a think about it and take my situation into consideration.
I felt so shaky driving the rest of the way to work. I took another wrong turn, which made me feel even worse. I couldn't help breaking into tears just thinking how close I had come to being the cause of an almost head-on collision and all because of this job. What are we supposed to do? I'm faced with this dilemma every time I get a call-out to drive into work in the hours when I should be sleeping. I've always said that there will come a day when something like this happens. I know I've driven through red lights before because I haven't noticed. It's a risk I have to take because it's my job to get into work and provide a service that aids in patient care. It can mean life or death to a patient on some nights. To me personally, if I can save a patient's life by speeding to work but get slapped with a speeding fine, it's worth it. But who should pay for the speeding fine? Work?
I really didn't want to drive home after my work was done. I went to the tea room and made myself a strong cup of coffee and sat there and cried for a bit before I could muster up the strength to drive home. I cried myself to sleep just reliving how close it had been. It could have been me and the other person in that car being rushed to hospital. Some other scientist getting paged out at 4am to come and crossmatch bloods for me. I couldn't help but think how my family would react if they got the news that the crash had been fatal. I know my mum would blame work. She hates me having to drive out late at night for call-outs.
Anyway...I let work know that I would not be coming into work today. I needed the sleep. I had all my tyres changed and the alignment checked. I'm really dreading next weekend when I have be on call. I just get this awful aching feeling in my chest when I think about it.
I tried not to think about it today. I busied myself doing water changes for the fish tanks. Vacuuming and mopping the house. Spending time with Simba.I used the sauce that I kept aside from last night to make some pasta for dinner. All I had to do was cook some pasta and throw it into the sauce.
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