NEW YORK, NY – According to multiple sources in attendance at, or rapidly emerging from, the cardiopulmonary resuscitation currently underway in room 1214, the ongoing Code Blue is most definitely also a Code Brown.
“Mr. Watson must have been holding on to that for like a week,” said nurse Beverly Tillings with her face buried in her elbow, after she turned over CPR to a reluctant and visibly nauseated medical resident. “Once we started chest compressions, everything just came out. It’s everywhere. I think it hit the door. Excuse me, I’ve got to get out of here.”
Ward clerk Emilia Jones confirmed that even she could tell it was a Code Brown from all the way down the hall. “At first, after they called the Code Blue, everybody was running as fast as they could to Mr. Watson’s room, with the carts and everything. But after five minutes, they started pouring back in the opposite direction. One of the interns tripped over himself trying to get to the stairwell. That’s when I started to smell it, and I put on this N95 mask.”
“You know, they do NOT pay me enough for this,” added Jones.
An ashen-faced medical student, who had just finished retching into a recycling bin beside the elevators, reported that the medicine fellow leading the code was heroically barking out orders in the room despite the continuous “volcanic-grade and mostly-liquid” Code Brown. “I don’t know how he’s still doing it. Although I’m pretty sure I saw him puke into the inside pocket of his scrub shirt. Jesus, I couldn’t stay in there for another second.”
At press time, the Code Brown team was unenthusiastically making their way down the hallway with the emergency bleach and mop buckets.
