\n<\/p>\n
\u201cHey, buddy, how are you doing?\u201d a man wearing a Boba Fett costume said as he leaned over the bed of a young boy in a hospital gown.<\/p>\n
It was a Sunday afternoon in the emergency room at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, where Dr. Alex Arroyo, the hospital\u2019s director of pediatric emergency medicine, often dons one of more than 20 costumes when he visits patients. His favorite is Boba Fett, the famed bounty hunter from the \u201cStar Wars\u201d films.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love what I do, but it\u2019s sure hot in there!\u201d said Dr. Arroyo, 48, who has worked at the hospital since 2006. He started wearing costumes in 2021.<\/p>\n
A die-hard \u201cStar Wars\u201d fan who grew up watching the original trilogy with his parents, Dr. Arroyo has passed that love on to his two youngest children, Grayson, 8, and Karra, 6. For New York Comic Con each year, the whole family dresses up, including his wife, Dr. Sharon Yellin, 44, a fellow pediatric emergency medicine physician who works at NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital. One year they went as the family from \u201cEncanto.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cI was the big, strong sister with the donkey,\u201d Dr. Arroyo said, referring to the character Luisa.<\/p>\n
Dr. Arroyo, who also has a 21-year-old son, Colin, from a previous marriage, was born in the Borough Park neighborhood of South Brooklyn \u2014 at Maimonides, in fact. Now he lives less than a mile from the house where he grew up, in a four-bedroom, three-story 1920s brownstone. He uses one of the spare bedrooms as his office and rents out the third floor.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a frightening place to be inside of because I\u2019m also an active-duty comic collector,\u201d he said of his office. \u201cIt\u2019s filled wall to wall with toys. It\u2019s my sanctuary away from the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
READY TO ROCK<\/strong> I wake up at 7:30 or 8. I probably don\u2019t need my iPhone alarm, but I set it just in case. It\u2019s \u201cSabotage\u201d by the Beastie Boys. It puts me in the mood for the day.<\/p>\n The first thing I do is make a cup of coffee. I brew as much as I can in the Keurig. I\u2019m not a coffee snob \u2014 I\u2019ll have whatever\u2019s available.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n CHEF HOUR<\/strong> While my children run downstairs to steal some iPad or TV time, I get breakfast going. My go-tos are pancakes, waffles and quail eggs \u2014 I bought them at the grocery store around the corner as a joke one day, thinking my kids would find them hilarious because they\u2019re so tiny, but they\u2019ve gotten to really enjoy them. They\u2019re extremely difficult to open, though; there\u2019s usually shells everywhere. Somehow, I\u2019ve become the default cook for the house. My wife refers to my cooking style as \u201c\u2018Iron Chef\u2019 on steroids.\u201d I cook the way I work \u2014 extremely fast and really efficient, but it\u2019s really messy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n TECH FIX <\/strong>I check my email first, and then the WhatsApp groups from the hospital to see if anything happened overnight or if anyone needs anything. Then I\u2019ll run over to Instagram, scroll through X to catch up on what happened when I was sleeping. I\u2019m something of a social media addict. Then my wife and I face off in our daily Wordle, Connections and mini New York Times Crossword challenges. We text each other our results to see who beat who today.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n FIGHT CLUB <\/strong>Around 10 or 11 a.m., I head to jujitsu class at Windsor Terrace Martial Arts. I try to go as often as possible, sometimes as much as 10 times per week. I\u2019ve been doing it for about 17 months. I\u2019ll usually do a private lesson on Sunday. I generate a lot of joy by strangling people who I consider my friends. It\u2019s an amazing outlet for the horrors of the world I see on a daily basis.<\/p>\n SPLIT TRACK <\/strong>When it comes to work, my Sundays vary. I could be working one of three 12-hour emergency room shifts \u2014 which start at 7 a.m., or 1 p.m., or 7 p.m. \u2014 or I could be off. Today, I have a 1 p.m. shift.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n I run the department, so my time in the E.R. is limited to about 12 hours per week. My other time is occupied with being in the office and trying to manage the day-to-day craziness that is running an E.R. in New York City.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n HEADING IN<\/strong> I take a shower, then head to the hospital. On a good day with no traffic, it\u2019s a six-minute drive. Usually parking is a challenge, but not on the weekend, which is nice. I get a cup of iced coffee from Dunkin\u2019 Donuts around the corner from the hospital.<\/p>\n SUITING UP <\/strong>I\u2019m starting my shift by visiting kids as Boba Fett, so I head to my office to change into my costume. It takes me about 20 minutes to put on, and I need help. I wanted it to be as close to movie accurate as possible, so it has at least 20 different pieces I have to put on. Good luck sitting down or walking through doors!<\/p>\n BOBA FETT WILL SEE YOU NOW <\/strong>I put aside an hour at the beginning of my shift to walk around in costume, because I don\u2019t actually work while wearing it. Even on Halloween, we discourage wearing any costumes \u2014 the last thing you want is SpongeBob SquarePants handling your child\u2019s cardiac arrest.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n I have at least four \u201cStar Wars\u201d costumes, including two Jedis and a fighter pilot. \u201cStar Wars\u201d is good because it\u2019s a ubiquitous thing that reaches across generations \u2014 when kids recognize a character, they light up and their eyes kind of pop out of their head.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n THE REAL WORK BEGINS <\/strong>The 1 p.m. to 1 a.m. shift is the busiest of the three \u2014 I\u2019m seeing patients pretty much nonstop. On a good day, I can sit down for five minutes at some point to eat and pee, but sometimes that\u2019s not possible because I\u2019m running around like a maniac.<\/p>\n I see lots of fevers \u2014 which, in a weeks-old baby, is one of the biggest emergencies we can see in pediatric emergency medicine. I liken that to an adult with chest pain, because it\u2019s usually indicative of something very serious and we have to also rule out all the bad things. In the spring and summer, when the weather is nicer, I also see lots of broken bones, especially broken arms. Kids fall down at the park, especially off the monkey bars.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n SUNDAY FUNDAY<\/strong> When I\u2019m not working \u2014 or when I\u2019m working the late shift \u2014 I\u2019ll do something fun with my kids. They\u2019re big foodies, so I\u2019ll take them to Smorgasburg, the open-air food market in Prospect Park. The French fry place is my favorite. My kids love the rainbow grilled cheese, but it looks disgusting.<\/p>\n Or we might take a trip to grandma\u2019s house and do brunch. Then we might see a movie at Nitehawk Cinema \u2014 Prospect Park, which is great because it has food.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n HOT DOG NIGHT <\/strong>When I\u2019m home, around 5 or 5:30, I\u2019ll make dinner for my kids. Their palates aren\u2019t as refined as those of many Brooklyn children. They\u2019re big on chicken, pizza, hot dogs, pasta \u2026 and my son loves sushi.<\/p>\n After my wife and I put the kids to bed around 7:30 or 8, we\u2019ll eat dinner around 8:30 \u2014 usually something more adventurous than a hot dog and mac and cheese.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n TV TIME<\/strong> My wife and I will watch pretty much everything \u2014 dramas, comedies, period pieces. We recently finished \u201cThe Crown.\u201d We\u2019re big fans of \u201cCobra Kai,\u201d \u201cYellowstone\u201d and murder mystery documentaries.<\/p>\n DOOMSCROLLING<\/strong> Around midnight, I head upstairs to bed, where I spend 30 minutes doomscrolling whatever social media app to lull myself to sleep.<\/p>\n The nice thing about working in emergency medicine is that I don\u2019t get the \u201cSunday Scaries.\u201d My schedule flips and turns constantly, so I\u2019m in this perpetual cycle of \u201cwhatever comes, comes.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n