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Every hospital bed in Japan comes with a nurse call button, and on a children's ward it is the one piece of medical equipment a patient can operate without help. One pediatric nurse has turned this into an ongoing series: each day she posts the winner of her unofficial award for the cutest nurse call of the shift.
The joke, such as it is, comes from the fact that very small children have not yet worked out that the button is for emergencies. They treat it as a doorbell, an intercom, a direct line to an adult who has promised to come. And because many of them are spending their nights on the ward without a parent at the bedside, a surprising number of the winning calls turn out to be loneliness wearing the costume of a formal request.
The entry that set this particular collection off involves a boy who had already packed his backpack, pressed the button, and announced his departure using the polite phrase you say on your way out of someone else's house. His stated reason for leaving was not that he wanted to go home. It was that his mother must be worried about him.
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My take
Comments loosely translated for tone. Reactions collected from Togetter and X threads.
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Today’s award for cutest nurse call goes to: “Actually, I think I’ll be going home now!!!! Thank you for having me!!!”
I got to his room and found him holding his backpack, fully packed. So you feel like going home, huh — and while I sat and listened, he made a whole passionate case: “I’m fine, but mama is worried about me, so.”
After a long talk, we reached an agreement that he would stay admitted.
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The child’s speech is full of a very small kid’s lisp: 思います (omoimasu, “I think”) comes out as 思いましゅ (omoimashu), and later on 看護師さん (kangoshi-san, “nurse”) gets softened into かんごちさん and then the even squishier かんごったん. English can’t really carry that, so it shows up below as a slurred “th” where it matters most. The bigger joke is おじゃましました — the set phrase you say on your way out of someone else’s home, somewhere between “sorry to have intruded” and “thanks for having me.” He was treating an inpatient admission as a social visit that had run its course.
Today’s cutest nurse call award: “My eraser fell.”
I went to the room, and as I bent down to pick it up, a voice landed on my back: “Can I drop it again?”
I felt the strength it takes to keep not saying you’re lonely.
Today’s cutest nurse call award: “Heyyy, come heeere.”
Feeling lonely? I asked, going into his room, and got: “Nurthe, I like you. I like you about as much as bananas.”
“The same as bananas?” I laughed before I could stop myself, and — “Huh? What? I like bananas a LOT, you know!?” He was a little bit angry.
Today’s cutest nurse call: “Mijimiji! Mijimiji!” (a toddler’s mangled run at niji, “rainbow”)
I had absolutely no idea what that meant, and when I got to the room there was a huge rainbow outside the window.
He’d thrown the curtains wide open and was waiting for a nurse, beaming.
Today’s cutest nurse call award: “There’th a hole in my body.”
I examined the affected area. It was his belly button.
“It’s fine. That’s been open the whole time,” I explained, but he was not satisfied with this, and requested a full account of his condition several more times.
Today’s cutest nurse call award: “Is my mom not here yet?”
“You’re not lonely. Let’s wait together,” I said, and got back:
“I’m not lonely, but mom might be lonely because she can’t see me. Why don’t you call and ask her to come?”
I said sure, let’s give her a call, and his whole face lit up.
Today’s cutest nurse call award: “I got new pajamaaas! Come seeee!”
I went to the room and said, “They’re cute, they’ve got a ribbon!”
Her face went suddenly serious and she apologized: “Nurthe, you only own that one outfit, huh. I’m sorry..”
This is a uniform.
Today’s cutest nurse call award: “Um so, I have thome buthineth with the cute nurthie who came by earlier.”
A discussion then commenced among the several cute (self-described) nurses stepping forward to claim that this was them.
Today’s cutest award went to a patient being discharged.
A child barely old enough to be forming words announced, at full volume, on the way out of the ward: “I’ll be leaving ahead of you!!”
It was, exactly, a nurse coming off day shift.
お先に失礼します (osaki ni shitsurei shimasu) — literally “excuse me for going first” — is the standard thing you say to colleagues when you clock out before they do. It’s in every office and every hospital, every day. The child, lisping it into おさきにしちゅれいします, had clearly picked it up from watching the nurses leave, and deployed it on his way out of the ward like a staff member ending a shift.