Christmas themes found in hospital dramas

Being a patient in the hospital during Christmas is no gift. There is something extraordinary when these giant factories of patient care slow and become still during the holidays.

They never stop. They can't. But vacating the less ill quiets the daily commotion. It is like watching a great ocean liner trying to come to a stop. Patients who don't need to be there are sent home, and admissions are delayed for a day or two. Those who are pinned down to IVs are going nowhere, and the ventilators for life-support have very short power cords.

The leftovers are the sickest or the longtimers. In the pediatric ward or in a children's hospital, the kids not going anywhere are the ones with serious chronic diseases like cystic fibrosis or cancer. The adults may be someone recovering from critical emergency surgery that could not be postponed, or a heart attack, or a patient disabled from the ravages of a stroke awaiting a vacant bed in a nursing home.

The staff is a skeleton crew; there is no better place than in a hospital to use that term. The rush and hustle of the many extra personnel are gone. One can imagine what a hospital might have been like decades ago, when medicine was simpler. The many accessories of a modern medical center are closed and only pried open with the greatest of efforts. The special imaging tools are rested, the consultants are not to be found, and the extra supportive therapies are put on hold for a day or two. The temporary hiatus permits the well to be home with their families, while the sick must have their families come to them.

There is always a solemnity in any building consecrated for the healing of the infirm, but during this season of lights, there is an additional quiet carol of hope. It is nurtured by the times, or it is more audible from the reduction in the background noise. In different parts of the hospital, in silent rooms or in the organized chaos of an intensive care unit, there will be some remaining in a hospital at Christmas time who will never leave alive; you just don't want them to die that day.

In December of 1980, was an episode of "M*A*S*H*" titled "Death Takes a Holiday." The irreverent bunch of surgeons and nurses of the 4077th did not want their patient, a young soldier, a husband and father to die on Christmas, forever tainting the holiday for his family.

They did everything they could to keep him alive until midnight. They even prevented Father Mulcahy from administering last rites while it was still Christmas. In the end, all medical measures failed.

Finally, to preserve the day untarnished, Hawkeye pushes the hands of the clock forward. Now they could legitimately write on the death certificate Dec. 26.