clean underwear

so we have this guy with a laryngectomy.  big fan of creeping around the unit gesturing wildly at anyone who looks his direction and making them read long winded notes off of his note pads.  he's a well-meaning gentleman, just entirely and completely stubborn.  left AMA from the last floor is was on, went home and ripped out his neck JP, that kind of thing.

he gets assigned to our float pool nurse who used to work nights on the unit, who is ridiculously hilarious.  she goes to his room to assess him, and he's not there.  this is not that weird, and figuring that he's probably walking around the hospital, she thinks nothing of it.  until his brother calls.

all we can hear is the RN side of the conversation, which goes something like this:

"wait, where did he say he is....hmmm...ok....ok....well can you call him and tell him to come back?  ok.  ok.  well cocaine shouldn't interfere too much with his surgery, and we can check.  mmhmm.  mmmhmm. can i have his number?  ok, thanks".

cocaine?  ok, now we're all curious.  apparently the brother had gotten a text from the patient saying that he was at some apartments like 20 blocks away from the hospital.  keep in mind that he has no car and he's still an inpatient.  the brother was concerned that the patient was off doing drugs, and was going to miss his G tube placement, which was the whole reason he was admitted in the first place.

so the RN calls up the patient.  and we hear the following:

"hi, i'm ____ from ____ hospital and i'm your nurse today.  i'm going to have to ask you to come back to the hospital.  (long pause).  well....i know that you can't talk to me, but if you could make your way back this way that would be great.  one beep?  is that yes?  two beeps....is that no?  yes?  no?  ok.  ummm...well i'll see you when you come back."

there are literally laughing until we cry tears in the nurses station right now.  communicating via cell phones with beeping codes is a new one, and there aren't too many of those left these days.

guess who came back?  that's right.  and apparently he wasn't doing drugs, because all he came back with was a bag.  from the store.  of what?

clean underwear.

he left the hospital for hours and walked to god knows where (there are no stores around us) to get some clean underwear.

you can't make this stuff up.