Ominous Announcements

While sitting in various waiting rooms at Queen’s Medical Center last week, I heard a number of ominous public address announcements that made me look up from my iPad:

• ”Stroke team, emergency room.”
• “Modified trauma team, emergency room.”
• “IV therapy stat, room 605.”
• “Code blue, Kamehameha, Cancer Center.”
• “Acute stroke team, emergency room.”
• “Code red, POB2 lobby”
• “Code red, (unintelligible location), patient room.”

“Code blue” of course, means someone is in cardiac arrest; “code red” means there’s a fire hazard.

One has to expect these announcements in a hospital, but still, it sends chills through a person to hear them. The message they convey is that someone is in dire need of immediate medical attention.

That's pretty scary.