As stated previously, Nome is a unique place. So when I took my first night of call, I had already learned not to expect it to be like taking call in Tennessee and I was right.
Before my duties at the outpatient clinic had even ended that afternoon, my pager went off, telling me that a medevac flight would be leaving soon.
The attending physician asked me if I would rather stay and help out with the clinic and any patients that might come through the emergency room or assist with the medevac flight to a nearby village.
It was an easy decision. So instead of going down to the ER to see a new patient as is usually the case on a call night, I found myself en route to the Nome airport and boarding a small, 10-seat, twin-engine plane.
The next thing I knew, we were cruising several thousand feet above the Bering Sea, headed toward Russia. Only 14 miles short of reaching the other country and tomorrow, we landed on St. Lawrence Island, Alaska.
As our plane descended toward the runway, I looked out the window and noticed a large grey whale swimming near the surface of the ocean. When we landed, I saw a scattering of whale bones near the beach and several small wooden houses.
We picked up our patient, someone with health problems we couldn’t treat in Nome, and were back in the air within the hour, headed toward Anchorage.
Our patient lay comfortable on the gurney and remained stable for the duration of the flight.
Two and half hours later, after flying over the Yukon River and over the Alaska Range, Alaska’s highest mountains, we were on the ground in Anchorage.
No sooner had we touched down, then we received a call saying that there were two sick children in another village an hour south of Nome that would need transporting to either Nome or Anchorage.
After transporting our current patient to the hospital, we took off again and flew to the small village, our landing contingent on whether or not the village had turned on the runway lights. If not, then we would be forced to fly to another village 10 miles away on an unpaved road.
Fortunately, the lights were on, and our bush pilot, a guy originally from the Bronx, safely landed the plane. We were greeted by an older gentleman who motioned for us to sit on the cart attached to his ATV and drove us to the community health center. It was about 1 a.m.
As I gazed up at the sky, sans Northern Lights, it was difficult to believe that I was still in the United States. What I was experiencing was nothing like what I had experienced in Tennessee.
We arrived at the clinic and carefully transported two mothers and their infant children back to the plane. The pilot started up the engine, and we took off for Nome.
We arrived in Nome around 2:30 in the morning. The Northern Lights still weren’t visible, and had just spent six out of the past 10 hours in the air, flying across rural Alaska.
The paramedic took our patients by ambulance to the hospital while the physician’s assistant and I unloaded the equipment and prepared for the possibility of flying back to Anchorage to transport a patient who had suffered from a self-inflicted gunshot wound just a few minutes before.
By the time we had unloaded the equipment we had received word that the patient had passed away and we would be staying on the ground. I headed for the hospital call room to catch a few moments of sleep before the pager sounded again.
Three patients, two villages, one large city and six free hours of flying.
It was definitely not a typical call night.

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