The single-stall bathrooms in the hospital remain sanctuaries for the medical students and physician housestaff. (I would also assume so for other hospital staff, though I cannot be sure.) These bathrooms are small rooms—closets, really—that have drab walls with paint chipping off of them, a single fluorescent light overhead, one toilet, a stained porcelain sink that has low water pressure, a trashcan that is overflowing with used paper towels, and a paper towel dispenser that doesn’t work properly. Sometimes, there’s a dirty mirror in the bathroom. Other times, there is a extinguished cigarette in the sink and the bathroom smells like an ashtray.

The bathroom is one of the few places where one can escape the din of the hospital. (Another location is the stairwell.) Once the door closes and the lock is turned, the beeping and yelling and phone rings and pager noises and paper shuffling and keyboard typing and gurneys rolling and ventilators whooshing and snoring and farting and coughing and sighing and barfing and moaning and elevator dinging and clomping of feet

stop.

Or are at least hushed. All of that sounds far away.

The bathroom becomes a respite.

This is place where you can cry and no one will know. When frustration overtakes you and you feel like you’re not doing anything right or you’re worried that you did something that might have really hurt your patient or your senior resident humiliated you in front of everyone for no apparent reason or you’re so tired that you realize that you cannot suppress your emotions any longer, this is where you can go. To the bathroom.

This is the place where you go to unwind for a few moments when you’re confident that you’ll soon make an undeserved snarky remark, shake another person because there is nothing nice to say, or throw something against the wall or down the hallway.

The bathroom is a place where you can take a literal smoke break—provided that the lit cigarette won’t set off a nearby fire alarm—or a metaphorical one. When you feel like you can’t lean on anyone else at that moment, at least you can lean on the sink. And sigh.

It is a place of release—not just of physical waste, but of psychic waste, too. Sometimes (often?), we know that it is in our best interests to proceed in private. Indecent exposure can be problematic.

(Furthermore, the relaxation of sphincters can facilitate momentary well being, too. How chill do you feel when you’ve got to go?)

Should The Universe grant you a reprieve, then those hallowed moments in the bathroom can bring solace.

Alas: The churches may have their bells and organs to signal the masses to leave the sanctuary; you have your pager. Be grateful for the few moments that you can steal for yourself and remember: There are bathrooms throughout the hospital.