Rewards for good service (II)

So it's croup and flu season and I have seen a minimum of five croupy children a night and a whole host of chest infections. They just parade through the department, coughing on me and wiping their snotty noses on my clothes.

And now I am shivering with fever and breathing through my mouth.

I have to take another sick day off work. And I'm supposed to be doing the overnight shift today - it's already a busy enough shift as it is, with only 2 doctors covering the whole of A&E. I hope they manage to hire a locum doctor to replace me tonight.

I hate taking time off work. I always feel so guilty because I'm letting my patients and work colleagues down. Whenever a doctor goes off sick, it means that another doctor is working twice as hard to pick up the slack. It means longer waiting times for patients. It means grumpy patients, grumpy nurses, grumpy everybody.

Being sick makes me hate myself.