BY
Rose
Helpful
The electric flash of a lightening bolt detonating above me lights the walls, revealing the heavy layers of slime staining the concrete. I stand at the bottom of the ladder, watching Roy's legs disappear through the manhole, feeling jumpy and mad as hell.
I am jumpy for all the logical reasons: the distant rumble of floodwaters shake the storm drain around me; the atmosphere -- oxygen starved because of the thick mats of rotting vegetation -- has given me a case of hypoxic jitters; and the rising water level has me envisioning my body lying twisted and blotted tangled in a snag of brush in some concrete flood control ditch.... And I am mad because of the illogical reason that I am nervous -- I hate thunderstorms.
I always have. I'd rather do a well being check on one of those old ladies who keeps sixty-two cats and has a million bugs crawling on her bed, than run a response in a storm. Chet says it's 'cause I don't have enough meat on my bones to keep a snake warm. I think it's because my mother hedged her bets, having Aunt Kate hang fresh cedar on the lintels every spring, but saying Our Father's and sprinkling holy water in the corners when it stormed. 'Cinksi, lighting finds the just and unjust,' she'd say. I'd think of the old fossil bones embedded in the clay bluff's over the creek -- bones everyone claimed were the remains of Unktehi, killed by the Thunderbeings -- and of my science teacher, Mr. Anderson, rubbing a silk rag along a glass rod and making my hair stand on end. I figured they'd never be able to decide if I was good or bad and so would have to get me twice. I have tried not to be a superstitious blanket Indian, but the old ways sink into your skin when you aren't looking, until you end up with a second set of eyes to see the signs, omens, and ghosts -- eyes that can not close.
I ease the child onto the ladder, supporting him as he climbs. The waters are rising, lapping at my calves. The grass, lodged around the base of the uprights, wraps around my legs. Roy grabs the boy by his armpits and hauls him free of the sewer. Ominously, the current around my ankles grows swifter. In a few minutes or maybe just seconds, the deep water will be moving much faster than the top layer, creating a killing condition that everyone who's worked swift water rescue dreads.
I lift my foot onto the rung and realize I have miscalculated. I am swept off balance, falling into the rapidly moving, freezing torrent. Dirty water forces its way up my nose and into my mouth as I cling, one handed and white-knuckled, to the rung. Above me, separated by ten feet of air and two inches of water, Roy's lips shape a soundless yell. My turnout coat saturates and pulls me under. I curse the extra weigh of the candy bar I keep hidden in the pocket for an emergency. Now in an emergency, I'm going to be killed by that damn Snickers.
Somehow, I manage to push my head above water and suck in a lung full of air, before I go back under. The bulk of my SCBA rolls me belly down and a small branch hits me in the face. The cold knots my muscles and I can sense my numb fingers slipping gradually from the ladder. Desperately, I throw a leaden arm forward; the grass snares my watchband and I seize a handful, pulling. For a split second I make a fraction of an inch headway against the current. Then the weeds rip from the sludge covering the bottom of the tunnel and swirl away. My fingers finally slide from the rung, but my left elbow wedges painfully between the upright and the wall. Sputtering and coughing, I am able to drag myself onto the ladder.
Next thing I know, I am sitting on the pavement next to the manhole. The water rages beneath the street, inches from me. I gasp for air and shiver. Roy looks at me, his hands tightening in a faint hug around the child he is lifting into the cab of the squad. I look back down the metal rimmed hole, where black water glitters hungrily. Overhead, lightening flares in the darkened sky. I've never seen anything so beautiful.
Cooks Tour (Roy)
I kneel next to the biophone and try to figure out how to discretely scratch my nose, left sore and red by my cold and covered by a surgical mask. I watch Johnny drape sterile sheets over the woman's legs, cut away her bloody underwear, and make his examination. He nagged me the whole way to the scene about wanting to run this response. I tend to take the OB and gynnie calls because I think the wedding ring reassures some women and it's pretty hard for young girls to tell a cute guy like Gage about their "female difficulties". But mostly I run them because OB calls are a mess -- the women seldom have had prenatal care and too often terrible things have gone wrong. In my book Johnny is still a kid, even if that hard-edged streetwise calm that occasionally descends upon him suggests otherwise, and I want to protect him a little. Seniority has its privileges.
Maybe I'm wrong about this one. The woman looks healthy or as healthy as one can while crying, sweating and grunting. Despite previous problems, she's close enough to full term and the surroundings and her history suggests she's has had good prenatal care. Still, she is on the floor with us rather than in a delivery room.
The mother is beaten down but the intensity of the contractions and terror of the forces which have seized control of her body. I hear John talk her through, encouraging the rhythmic breathing that will allow her to rest between contractions. I make a brief report to base, knowing Brackett doesn't yet completely trust our abilities. While I talk, I look at the woman's face, beaded with sweat and twisted in pain. Call me old-fashioned but I didn't see my own children born -- with Chris they just didn't do that and with Jen I just couldn't do it. First time I saw a baby born, I was still a squadie with 43's and not a PM. I watched the woman scream and thought of Joanne suffering that way. I was so in awe of what I had witnessed that I cooked my wife a nice dinner and put the kids to bed. When I came back from convincing Chris he did NOT need another glass of water, Joanne was sitting in our bed wearing the new nightgown I had bought her for our anniversary. I studied her soft skin and gentle eyes and discovered that delivering a baby is not an aphrodisiac.
The husband panics in the background, I glance at the sheriff's deputy; we have enough to do without having to control a bystander. The infant's head is in the birth canal, a thatch of damp black hair and blue-white skin. Gage checks the position of the cord and suctions the infant's nose and mouth, working quickly before the next contraction moves child's shoulder forward and far enough from the birth canal for the baby to draw a breath. Abruptly, the woman's body tenses, squeezing impossibly and I hear her cry out. Within a few minutes the infant -- a boy -- slips into this world.
Sadly, I was not wrong. The infant lies too still as Gage cleans his mouth and nose again, and rubs the tiny body dry. I relay the terrifyingly low APGAR score to the hospital. For a second I lock eyes with John and see a terrible sadness. We both know, despite our best efforts, the infant will probably die. Then, Gage's game face drops into place and in a careful, calm voice he reassures the mother. With a strange pride I watch him work, knowing I can never really call him Junior again and mean it.
Cooks Tour (John)
Oh man, I hate suicide attempts. Someday, I'm going to write a book about how to do it right. Most people think it's easy to off themselves and botch it, I always feel sorry for the families who have to pick up what remains. Some of these selfish folks need think about their loved ones having to clean their blood, brains, vomit, and excrement off the walls and floors. Or about how they'll be saddled with caring for the brain damaged survivor.
Anyway, this time some guy has worked his way out onto a crane about ten stories above the ground. The whole way up Roy has been doing his smug senior partner bit. There are times when he does that, that I wish I was back hauling hose. He tells me to just imagine I'm walking on a garden fence -- garden fence my a...
I lead out, easing onto the crane, the belay line stretching between us. Roy follows. Technically, it should be a fairly routine pick off: get a ladder belt on the guy, put him on the line between us and walk back. There are only two catches. Roy and I are the anchor points and you never know how a potential suicide is going to react when you approach. When I had just started with the squad at 10's, a strung out junkie decided to end it with a handful bennies. She came out of her stupor while I was putting the O2 over her face and pulled a knife. That skinny, scared girl opened my arm from wrist to elbow.
The breeze is cool and wild; sweat gathers under my turnout coat, soaking my uniform shirt. The guy wires supporting the arm of the crane sing in the wind. About halfway across I look down. A mass of rebar protrudes from the concrete forms below, a field of steel spikes waiting to impale anything that falls on them. DeSoto looks down. I can see the sight register, Roy's face changes as he imagines himself falling. I decide to stick it to him. "Garden fence, huh?"
I ease around our jumper, talking softly and compassionately. Only a third of my brain is listening to what I'm saying, one third watches him, alert for any movement, the other third concentrates on balancing on the narrow bar beneath my feet. I can smell his sour, terror soaked sweat from five feet away. I safety off and crouch next to him, looping the belt around his waist. The man is hugging a strut on the crane, like it's his girlfriend. It takes every trick I have to get him onto the rope between us and to his feet.
Slowly, we work back. Roy steps ahead a few feet, moving past a strut and hooks onto the cable. I steer our man two steps forward, then unhook myself advancing beyond the vertical support.
Over the field of rebar our jumper looks down, stiffens and missteps. He falls, catching me in a vulnerable second as I am snapping my D ring over the cable. For an interminable instant, I am tipping backwards. Roy hangs onto the framework, bracing. His bloodless face is all I see as I fall.
The hook catches, I stop and am yanked sidewise, torn between the pull of the cable and the force of the dangling man on the 'bineer attached to my belt. My hips scream in protest as his weight settles onto my legs. I can't really feel the pain but I know I am hurting. I clutch at the belay line and pull; the rope turns hot in my hands. Roy grabs the line. Gasping and straining, we somehow drag his dead weight back onto the crane.
As soon as his feet hit the truss, I can feel my body again. I sag against the framework. My shoulders, knees and hips ache, my hands are a rope burned mess and a finger is bleeding where a half inch strip of skin has been torn away. Panting, I close my eyes, but not before again seeing DeSoto's face shiny with sweat and relief. For a second I feel Roy's hand on my elbow. The suicide-to-be sobs and shakes between us.
I hear DeSoto trying for his experienced old hand voice. "You did all right over there." But he fails to achieve the correct register. "I like that psychology you tried -- pretending you were scared."
"Pretending?" I mutter opening my eyes and lifting our victim to his feet.
Snakebite
I select a spot on a nice thick vein, bulging ropelike over the muscles, and position the needle. The bevel flashes in the sunlight. I watch the Angiocath shake as I approach the blood vessel. Taking a deep breath, I draw back. "Well, here it goes," I say trying to cover my nervousness. I have no idea how I'm going to finish the procedure even if I actually manage to get the catheter in. Perspiration trickles down my neck and a hose coupling digs into my hip.
But it is better to think about these details, than about the fact that the swelling around the fang marks has already expanded the width of my palm beyond the blue streak of ink I inscribed on my leg to mark the border of the bite. Or that my mouth tastes like my fingers smelled the entire guilty week after I stole a penny for candy from the offering box at Our Lady. Or that having symptoms this soon after a snakebite is very bad....
Biting my lip, I push the needle through the skin. "Argh!" Fourteen gauge is damn big. I bark orders and bleed everywhere trying to get the tubing hooked up. Chet looks as frightened as if it were his own blood. "Ok, Cap. Let's get me outta here." I fall back onto the stack of hose.
"Yeah, Lopez you bring in the squad. Let's get goin," he orders, jumping down from the rig.
For a confused second Kelly hands me the IV then takes it back. He fumbles with the wrapper covering the Sawyer extractor. The rig starts to move. Between the smoke ejectors and the monitor I can see Cap holding the radio.
I am left with nothing to do but worry and battle my queasy stomach. I have already thrown up down the side of Hector's 'dozer, narrowly missing Chet. I try to concentrate on something else, but all that comes to mind are Indian superstitions about snakes. I lie on the hose, thinking of the old woman in Long Valley, who wore rattlesnake rattles behind her ears. You could hear her coming before you saw her. She was one of the last of the old time quillworkers; all the other kids said she was a witch who hid poisoned quills in her work, to kill the unsuspecting. I was scared to death of her. One day she caught me trying to run away and drove me home in her beat up truck. The whole way back, I sat frozen staring at a burlap sack containing a freshly killed porcupine lying on the floorboards, afraid to move for fear of getting stuck.
I can feel Kelly struggling with the extractor. His movements make my leg throb and I glance down. The icy sweat coating my calf and the blood-filled vesicles ballooning next to the holes left by the damned snake make it impossible for the extractor to seal. Chet keeps trying to reattach it. My leg is now swollen past my knee. I lose the war and vomit all over one of the jump lines. I slump back and moan. Mike is going to kill me if the snake doesn't.
Drained, I slip toward sleep. Only to be startled awake by the handitalkie demanding an update on the patient's condition. I grope for the radio, unable to get it oriented correctly, unable to feel it beneath my fingers. My tongue is thick and keeps unexpectedly getting between my teeth, and my lips are dead within my face. I strive to distance myself from what is happening, encroaching grogginess makes this an easy task. "Patient is experiencing numbness around the mouth and is somewhat drowsy...." I can't remember the rest of my symptoms or check my vitals, but it hardly matters. I close my eyes and let the HT drop. The rattlesnake woman finally got me with her quills.
Dilemma
I can't decide whose neck I'm going to wring first -- Kel Brackett for bullying my nurses or Sharon Walters for not acting like a professional. Sharon stares at the blank pad, her ankles wrapped in a mountain of strip chart paper, while Kel rages and rants. I roll my eyes and wish for a simple fight with radiology or the lab.
Sharon. I don't know what's with kids nowadays. Back when I graduated from Mother of Mercy, third-years ran the floors at night; we had to have it together. No batting the old eyelashes at the doctors. Sister Agnes, Mercy's director of nursing, would have picked her teeth with Sharon's bones had the girl been working for her. Not that Sharon is a bad nurse, she does her job competently, but she isn't a pusher. And down here you have to be and more importantly the patients need you to be. Walters has to learn to assert herself. She is a professional; the sooner she realizes it and acts like one, the sooner the rest of staff will treat her accordingly. Nurses have fought too hard to be regarded as contributing members of the patient care team to jeopardize it by resuming the role of the doctor's "hand maiden" even for a moment.
And Kel.... Hopkins must have great mental health benefits for their nursing staff, because if he learned this behavior there, the nurses must go straight from the ED to the psych floor -- as patients. I know he gives my staff breakdowns. Even a year after the implementation of Wendworth-Thompson, Kel still gets worried about running a code by radio. So rather than dealing with it constructively, he picnics on whichever member of the staff is in range. This wouldn't even have happened, if he took his own notes....
Enough! I give Sharon a look that makes her cringe. "We can get it from the tape," I say pulling the reels from the recorder. Walters clutches the spools to her breast and tries to scurry away, but her feet are entangled in the EKG paper. Kel makes a few more cutting remarks before we lock eyes. Time to take charge. I clear my throat.
******
FEED THE WRITER!
Return to Orphans
The electric flash of a lightening bolt detonating above me lights the walls, revealing the heavy layers of slime staining the concrete. I stand at the bottom of the ladder, watching Roy's legs disappear through the manhole, feeling jumpy and mad as hell.
I am jumpy for all the logical reasons: the distant rumble of floodwaters shake the storm drain around me; the atmosphere -- oxygen starved because of the thick mats of rotting vegetation -- has given me a case of hypoxic jitters; and the rising water level has me envisioning my body lying twisted and blotted tangled in a snag of brush in some concrete flood control ditch.... And I am mad because of the illogical reason that I am nervous -- I hate thunderstorms.
I always have. I'd rather do a well being check on one of those old ladies who keeps sixty-two cats and has a million bugs crawling on her bed, than run a response in a storm. Chet says it's 'cause I don't have enough meat on my bones to keep a snake warm. I think it's because my mother hedged her bets, having Aunt Kate hang fresh cedar on the lintels every spring, but saying Our Father's and sprinkling holy water in the corners when it stormed. 'Cinksi, lighting finds the just and unjust,' she'd say. I'd think of the old fossil bones embedded in the clay bluff's over the creek -- bones everyone claimed were the remains of Unktehi, killed by the Thunderbeings -- and of my science teacher, Mr. Anderson, rubbing a silk rag along a glass rod and making my hair stand on end. I figured they'd never be able to decide if I was good or bad and so would have to get me twice. I have tried not to be a superstitious blanket Indian, but the old ways sink into your skin when you aren't looking, until you end up with a second set of eyes to see the signs, omens, and ghosts -- eyes that can not close.
I ease the child onto the ladder, supporting him as he climbs. The waters are rising, lapping at my calves. The grass, lodged around the base of the uprights, wraps around my legs. Roy grabs the boy by his armpits and hauls him free of the sewer. Ominously, the current around my ankles grows swifter. In a few minutes or maybe just seconds, the deep water will be moving much faster than the top layer, creating a killing condition that everyone who's worked swift water rescue dreads.
I lift my foot onto the rung and realize I have miscalculated. I am swept off balance, falling into the rapidly moving, freezing torrent. Dirty water forces its way up my nose and into my mouth as I cling, one handed and white-knuckled, to the rung. Above me, separated by ten feet of air and two inches of water, Roy's lips shape a soundless yell. My turnout coat saturates and pulls me under. I curse the extra weigh of the candy bar I keep hidden in the pocket for an emergency. Now in an emergency, I'm going to be killed by that damn Snickers.
Somehow, I manage to push my head above water and suck in a lung full of air, before I go back under. The bulk of my SCBA rolls me belly down and a small branch hits me in the face. The cold knots my muscles and I can sense my numb fingers slipping gradually from the ladder. Desperately, I throw a leaden arm forward; the grass snares my watchband and I seize a handful, pulling. For a split second I make a fraction of an inch headway against the current. Then the weeds rip from the sludge covering the bottom of the tunnel and swirl away. My fingers finally slide from the rung, but my left elbow wedges painfully between the upright and the wall. Sputtering and coughing, I am able to drag myself onto the ladder.
Next thing I know, I am sitting on the pavement next to the manhole. The water rages beneath the street, inches from me. I gasp for air and shiver. Roy looks at me, his hands tightening in a faint hug around the child he is lifting into the cab of the squad. I look back down the metal rimmed hole, where black water glitters hungrily. Overhead, lightening flares in the darkened sky. I've never seen anything so beautiful.
I kneel next to the biophone and try to figure out how to discretely scratch my nose, left sore and red by my cold and covered by a surgical mask. I watch Johnny drape sterile sheets over the woman's legs, cut away her bloody underwear, and make his examination. He nagged me the whole way to the scene about wanting to run this response. I tend to take the OB and gynnie calls because I think the wedding ring reassures some women and it's pretty hard for young girls to tell a cute guy like Gage about their "female difficulties". But mostly I run them because OB calls are a mess -- the women seldom have had prenatal care and too often terrible things have gone wrong. In my book Johnny is still a kid, even if that hard-edged streetwise calm that occasionally descends upon him suggests otherwise, and I want to protect him a little. Seniority has its privileges.
Maybe I'm wrong about this one. The woman looks healthy or as healthy as one can while crying, sweating and grunting. Despite previous problems, she's close enough to full term and the surroundings and her history suggests she's has had good prenatal care. Still, she is on the floor with us rather than in a delivery room.
The mother is beaten down but the intensity of the contractions and terror of the forces which have seized control of her body. I hear John talk her through, encouraging the rhythmic breathing that will allow her to rest between contractions. I make a brief report to base, knowing Brackett doesn't yet completely trust our abilities. While I talk, I look at the woman's face, beaded with sweat and twisted in pain. Call me old-fashioned but I didn't see my own children born -- with Chris they just didn't do that and with Jen I just couldn't do it. First time I saw a baby born, I was still a squadie with 43's and not a PM. I watched the woman scream and thought of Joanne suffering that way. I was so in awe of what I had witnessed that I cooked my wife a nice dinner and put the kids to bed. When I came back from convincing Chris he did NOT need another glass of water, Joanne was sitting in our bed wearing the new nightgown I had bought her for our anniversary. I studied her soft skin and gentle eyes and discovered that delivering a baby is not an aphrodisiac.
The husband panics in the background, I glance at the sheriff's deputy; we have enough to do without having to control a bystander. The infant's head is in the birth canal, a thatch of damp black hair and blue-white skin. Gage checks the position of the cord and suctions the infant's nose and mouth, working quickly before the next contraction moves child's shoulder forward and far enough from the birth canal for the baby to draw a breath. Abruptly, the woman's body tenses, squeezing impossibly and I hear her cry out. Within a few minutes the infant -- a boy -- slips into this world.
Sadly, I was not wrong. The infant lies too still as Gage cleans his mouth and nose again, and rubs the tiny body dry. I relay the terrifyingly low APGAR score to the hospital. For a second I lock eyes with John and see a terrible sadness. We both know, despite our best efforts, the infant will probably die. Then, Gage's game face drops into place and in a careful, calm voice he reassures the mother. With a strange pride I watch him work, knowing I can never really call him Junior again and mean it.
Cooks Tour (John)
Oh man, I hate suicide attempts. Someday, I'm going to write a book about how to do it right. Most people think it's easy to off themselves and botch it, I always feel sorry for the families who have to pick up what remains. Some of these selfish folks need think about their loved ones having to clean their blood, brains, vomit, and excrement off the walls and floors. Or about how they'll be saddled with caring for the brain damaged survivor.
Anyway, this time some guy has worked his way out onto a crane about ten stories above the ground. The whole way up Roy has been doing his smug senior partner bit. There are times when he does that, that I wish I was back hauling hose. He tells me to just imagine I'm walking on a garden fence -- garden fence my a...
I lead out, easing onto the crane, the belay line stretching between us. Roy follows. Technically, it should be a fairly routine pick off: get a ladder belt on the guy, put him on the line between us and walk back. There are only two catches. Roy and I are the anchor points and you never know how a potential suicide is going to react when you approach. When I had just started with the squad at 10's, a strung out junkie decided to end it with a handful bennies. She came out of her stupor while I was putting the O2 over her face and pulled a knife. That skinny, scared girl opened my arm from wrist to elbow.
The breeze is cool and wild; sweat gathers under my turnout coat, soaking my uniform shirt. The guy wires supporting the arm of the crane sing in the wind. About halfway across I look down. A mass of rebar protrudes from the concrete forms below, a field of steel spikes waiting to impale anything that falls on them. DeSoto looks down. I can see the sight register, Roy's face changes as he imagines himself falling. I decide to stick it to him. "Garden fence, huh?"
I ease around our jumper, talking softly and compassionately. Only a third of my brain is listening to what I'm saying, one third watches him, alert for any movement, the other third concentrates on balancing on the narrow bar beneath my feet. I can smell his sour, terror soaked sweat from five feet away. I safety off and crouch next to him, looping the belt around his waist. The man is hugging a strut on the crane, like it's his girlfriend. It takes every trick I have to get him onto the rope between us and to his feet.
Slowly, we work back. Roy steps ahead a few feet, moving past a strut and hooks onto the cable. I steer our man two steps forward, then unhook myself advancing beyond the vertical support.
Over the field of rebar our jumper looks down, stiffens and missteps. He falls, catching me in a vulnerable second as I am snapping my D ring over the cable. For an interminable instant, I am tipping backwards. Roy hangs onto the framework, bracing. His bloodless face is all I see as I fall.
The hook catches, I stop and am yanked sidewise, torn between the pull of the cable and the force of the dangling man on the 'bineer attached to my belt. My hips scream in protest as his weight settles onto my legs. I can't really feel the pain but I know I am hurting. I clutch at the belay line and pull; the rope turns hot in my hands. Roy grabs the line. Gasping and straining, we somehow drag his dead weight back onto the crane.
As soon as his feet hit the truss, I can feel my body again. I sag against the framework. My shoulders, knees and hips ache, my hands are a rope burned mess and a finger is bleeding where a half inch strip of skin has been torn away. Panting, I close my eyes, but not before again seeing DeSoto's face shiny with sweat and relief. For a second I feel Roy's hand on my elbow. The suicide-to-be sobs and shakes between us.
I hear DeSoto trying for his experienced old hand voice. "You did all right over there." But he fails to achieve the correct register. "I like that psychology you tried -- pretending you were scared."
"Pretending?" I mutter opening my eyes and lifting our victim to his feet.
Snakebite
I select a spot on a nice thick vein, bulging ropelike over the muscles, and position the needle. The bevel flashes in the sunlight. I watch the Angiocath shake as I approach the blood vessel. Taking a deep breath, I draw back. "Well, here it goes," I say trying to cover my nervousness. I have no idea how I'm going to finish the procedure even if I actually manage to get the catheter in. Perspiration trickles down my neck and a hose coupling digs into my hip.
But it is better to think about these details, than about the fact that the swelling around the fang marks has already expanded the width of my palm beyond the blue streak of ink I inscribed on my leg to mark the border of the bite. Or that my mouth tastes like my fingers smelled the entire guilty week after I stole a penny for candy from the offering box at Our Lady. Or that having symptoms this soon after a snakebite is very bad....
Biting my lip, I push the needle through the skin. "Argh!" Fourteen gauge is damn big. I bark orders and bleed everywhere trying to get the tubing hooked up. Chet looks as frightened as if it were his own blood. "Ok, Cap. Let's get me outta here." I fall back onto the stack of hose.
"Yeah, Lopez you bring in the squad. Let's get goin," he orders, jumping down from the rig.
For a confused second Kelly hands me the IV then takes it back. He fumbles with the wrapper covering the Sawyer extractor. The rig starts to move. Between the smoke ejectors and the monitor I can see Cap holding the radio.
I am left with nothing to do but worry and battle my queasy stomach. I have already thrown up down the side of Hector's 'dozer, narrowly missing Chet. I try to concentrate on something else, but all that comes to mind are Indian superstitions about snakes. I lie on the hose, thinking of the old woman in Long Valley, who wore rattlesnake rattles behind her ears. You could hear her coming before you saw her. She was one of the last of the old time quillworkers; all the other kids said she was a witch who hid poisoned quills in her work, to kill the unsuspecting. I was scared to death of her. One day she caught me trying to run away and drove me home in her beat up truck. The whole way back, I sat frozen staring at a burlap sack containing a freshly killed porcupine lying on the floorboards, afraid to move for fear of getting stuck.
I can feel Kelly struggling with the extractor. His movements make my leg throb and I glance down. The icy sweat coating my calf and the blood-filled vesicles ballooning next to the holes left by the damned snake make it impossible for the extractor to seal. Chet keeps trying to reattach it. My leg is now swollen past my knee. I lose the war and vomit all over one of the jump lines. I slump back and moan. Mike is going to kill me if the snake doesn't.
Drained, I slip toward sleep. Only to be startled awake by the handitalkie demanding an update on the patient's condition. I grope for the radio, unable to get it oriented correctly, unable to feel it beneath my fingers. My tongue is thick and keeps unexpectedly getting between my teeth, and my lips are dead within my face. I strive to distance myself from what is happening, encroaching grogginess makes this an easy task. "Patient is experiencing numbness around the mouth and is somewhat drowsy...." I can't remember the rest of my symptoms or check my vitals, but it hardly matters. I close my eyes and let the HT drop. The rattlesnake woman finally got me with her quills.
Dilemma
I can't decide whose neck I'm going to wring first -- Kel Brackett for bullying my nurses or Sharon Walters for not acting like a professional. Sharon stares at the blank pad, her ankles wrapped in a mountain of strip chart paper, while Kel rages and rants. I roll my eyes and wish for a simple fight with radiology or the lab.
Sharon. I don't know what's with kids nowadays. Back when I graduated from Mother of Mercy, third-years ran the floors at night; we had to have it together. No batting the old eyelashes at the doctors. Sister Agnes, Mercy's director of nursing, would have picked her teeth with Sharon's bones had the girl been working for her. Not that Sharon is a bad nurse, she does her job competently, but she isn't a pusher. And down here you have to be and more importantly the patients need you to be. Walters has to learn to assert herself. She is a professional; the sooner she realizes it and acts like one, the sooner the rest of staff will treat her accordingly. Nurses have fought too hard to be regarded as contributing members of the patient care team to jeopardize it by resuming the role of the doctor's "hand maiden" even for a moment.
And Kel.... Hopkins must have great mental health benefits for their nursing staff, because if he learned this behavior there, the nurses must go straight from the ED to the psych floor -- as patients. I know he gives my staff breakdowns. Even a year after the implementation of Wendworth-Thompson, Kel still gets worried about running a code by radio. So rather than dealing with it constructively, he picnics on whichever member of the staff is in range. This wouldn't even have happened, if he took his own notes....
Enough! I give Sharon a look that makes her cringe. "We can get it from the tape," I say pulling the reels from the recorder. Walters clutches the spools to her breast and tries to scurry away, but her feet are entangled in the EKG paper. Kel makes a few more cutting remarks before we lock eyes. Time to take charge. I clear my throat.
******
FEED THE WRITER!
Return to Orphans
Oh man, I hate suicide attempts. Someday, I'm going to write a book about how to do it right. Most people think it's easy to off themselves and botch it, I always feel sorry for the families who have to pick up what remains. Some of these selfish folks need think about their loved ones having to clean their blood, brains, vomit, and excrement off the walls and floors. Or about how they'll be saddled with caring for the brain damaged survivor.
Anyway, this time some guy has worked his way out onto a crane about ten stories above the ground. The whole way up Roy has been doing his smug senior partner bit. There are times when he does that, that I wish I was back hauling hose. He tells me to just imagine I'm walking on a garden fence -- garden fence my a...
I lead out, easing onto the crane, the belay line stretching between us. Roy follows. Technically, it should be a fairly routine pick off: get a ladder belt on the guy, put him on the line between us and walk back. There are only two catches. Roy and I are the anchor points and you never know how a potential suicide is going to react when you approach. When I had just started with the squad at 10's, a strung out junkie decided to end it with a handful bennies. She came out of her stupor while I was putting the O2 over her face and pulled a knife. That skinny, scared girl opened my arm from wrist to elbow.
The breeze is cool and wild; sweat gathers under my turnout coat, soaking my uniform shirt. The guy wires supporting the arm of the crane sing in the wind. About halfway across I look down. A mass of rebar protrudes from the concrete forms below, a field of steel spikes waiting to impale anything that falls on them. DeSoto looks down. I can see the sight register, Roy's face changes as he imagines himself falling. I decide to stick it to him. "Garden fence, huh?"
I ease around our jumper, talking softly and compassionately. Only a third of my brain is listening to what I'm saying, one third watches him, alert for any movement, the other third concentrates on balancing on the narrow bar beneath my feet. I can smell his sour, terror soaked sweat from five feet away. I safety off and crouch next to him, looping the belt around his waist. The man is hugging a strut on the crane, like it's his girlfriend. It takes every trick I have to get him onto the rope between us and to his feet.
Slowly, we work back. Roy steps ahead a few feet, moving past a strut and hooks onto the cable. I steer our man two steps forward, then unhook myself advancing beyond the vertical support.
Over the field of rebar our jumper looks down, stiffens and missteps. He falls, catching me in a vulnerable second as I am snapping my D ring over the cable. For an interminable instant, I am tipping backwards. Roy hangs onto the framework, bracing. His bloodless face is all I see as I fall.
The hook catches, I stop and am yanked sidewise, torn between the pull of the cable and the force of the dangling man on the 'bineer attached to my belt. My hips scream in protest as his weight settles onto my legs. I can't really feel the pain but I know I am hurting. I clutch at the belay line and pull; the rope turns hot in my hands. Roy grabs the line. Gasping and straining, we somehow drag his dead weight back onto the crane.
As soon as his feet hit the truss, I can feel my body again. I sag against the framework. My shoulders, knees and hips ache, my hands are a rope burned mess and a finger is bleeding where a half inch strip of skin has been torn away. Panting, I close my eyes, but not before again seeing DeSoto's face shiny with sweat and relief. For a second I feel Roy's hand on my elbow. The suicide-to-be sobs and shakes between us.
I hear DeSoto trying for his experienced old hand voice. "You did all right over there." But he fails to achieve the correct register. "I like that psychology you tried -- pretending you were scared."
"Pretending?" I mutter opening my eyes and lifting our victim to his feet.
I select a spot on a nice thick vein, bulging ropelike over the muscles, and position the needle. The bevel flashes in the sunlight. I watch the Angiocath shake as I approach the blood vessel. Taking a deep breath, I draw back. "Well, here it goes," I say trying to cover my nervousness. I have no idea how I'm going to finish the procedure even if I actually manage to get the catheter in. Perspiration trickles down my neck and a hose coupling digs into my hip.
But it is better to think about these details, than about the fact that the swelling around the fang marks has already expanded the width of my palm beyond the blue streak of ink I inscribed on my leg to mark the border of the bite. Or that my mouth tastes like my fingers smelled the entire guilty week after I stole a penny for candy from the offering box at Our Lady. Or that having symptoms this soon after a snakebite is very bad....
Biting my lip, I push the needle through the skin. "Argh!" Fourteen gauge is damn big. I bark orders and bleed everywhere trying to get the tubing hooked up. Chet looks as frightened as if it were his own blood. "Ok, Cap. Let's get me outta here." I fall back onto the stack of hose.
"Yeah, Lopez you bring in the squad. Let's get goin," he orders, jumping down from the rig.
For a confused second Kelly hands me the IV then takes it back. He fumbles with the wrapper covering the Sawyer extractor. The rig starts to move. Between the smoke ejectors and the monitor I can see Cap holding the radio.
I am left with nothing to do but worry and battle my queasy stomach. I have already thrown up down the side of Hector's 'dozer, narrowly missing Chet. I try to concentrate on something else, but all that comes to mind are Indian superstitions about snakes. I lie on the hose, thinking of the old woman in Long Valley, who wore rattlesnake rattles behind her ears. You could hear her coming before you saw her. She was one of the last of the old time quillworkers; all the other kids said she was a witch who hid poisoned quills in her work, to kill the unsuspecting. I was scared to death of her. One day she caught me trying to run away and drove me home in her beat up truck. The whole way back, I sat frozen staring at a burlap sack containing a freshly killed porcupine lying on the floorboards, afraid to move for fear of getting stuck.
I can feel Kelly struggling with the extractor. His movements make my leg throb and I glance down. The icy sweat coating my calf and the blood-filled vesicles ballooning next to the holes left by the damned snake make it impossible for the extractor to seal. Chet keeps trying to reattach it. My leg is now swollen past my knee. I lose the war and vomit all over one of the jump lines. I slump back and moan. Mike is going to kill me if the snake doesn't.
Drained, I slip toward sleep. Only to be startled awake by the handitalkie demanding an update on the patient's condition. I grope for the radio, unable to get it oriented correctly, unable to feel it beneath my fingers. My tongue is thick and keeps unexpectedly getting between my teeth, and my lips are dead within my face. I strive to distance myself from what is happening, encroaching grogginess makes this an easy task. "Patient is experiencing numbness around the mouth and is somewhat drowsy...." I can't remember the rest of my symptoms or check my vitals, but it hardly matters. I close my eyes and let the HT drop. The rattlesnake woman finally got me with her quills.
Dilemma
I can't decide whose neck I'm going to wring first -- Kel Brackett for bullying my nurses or Sharon Walters for not acting like a professional. Sharon stares at the blank pad, her ankles wrapped in a mountain of strip chart paper, while Kel rages and rants. I roll my eyes and wish for a simple fight with radiology or the lab.
Sharon. I don't know what's with kids nowadays. Back when I graduated from Mother of Mercy, third-years ran the floors at night; we had to have it together. No batting the old eyelashes at the doctors. Sister Agnes, Mercy's director of nursing, would have picked her teeth with Sharon's bones had the girl been working for her. Not that Sharon is a bad nurse, she does her job competently, but she isn't a pusher. And down here you have to be and more importantly the patients need you to be. Walters has to learn to assert herself. She is a professional; the sooner she realizes it and acts like one, the sooner the rest of staff will treat her accordingly. Nurses have fought too hard to be regarded as contributing members of the patient care team to jeopardize it by resuming the role of the doctor's "hand maiden" even for a moment.
And Kel.... Hopkins must have great mental health benefits for their nursing staff, because if he learned this behavior there, the nurses must go straight from the ED to the psych floor -- as patients. I know he gives my staff breakdowns. Even a year after the implementation of Wendworth-Thompson, Kel still gets worried about running a code by radio. So rather than dealing with it constructively, he picnics on whichever member of the staff is in range. This wouldn't even have happened, if he took his own notes....
Enough! I give Sharon a look that makes her cringe. "We can get it from the tape," I say pulling the reels from the recorder. Walters clutches the spools to her breast and tries to scurry away, but her feet are entangled in the EKG paper. Kel makes a few more cutting remarks before we lock eyes. Time to take charge. I clear my throat.
******
FEED THE WRITER!
I can't decide whose neck I'm going to wring first -- Kel Brackett for bullying my nurses or Sharon Walters for not acting like a professional. Sharon stares at the blank pad, her ankles wrapped in a mountain of strip chart paper, while Kel rages and rants. I roll my eyes and wish for a simple fight with radiology or the lab.
Sharon. I don't know what's with kids nowadays. Back when I graduated from Mother of Mercy, third-years ran the floors at night; we had to have it together. No batting the old eyelashes at the doctors. Sister Agnes, Mercy's director of nursing, would have picked her teeth with Sharon's bones had the girl been working for her. Not that Sharon is a bad nurse, she does her job competently, but she isn't a pusher. And down here you have to be and more importantly the patients need you to be. Walters has to learn to assert herself. She is a professional; the sooner she realizes it and acts like one, the sooner the rest of staff will treat her accordingly. Nurses have fought too hard to be regarded as contributing members of the patient care team to jeopardize it by resuming the role of the doctor's "hand maiden" even for a moment.
And Kel.... Hopkins must have great mental health benefits for their nursing staff, because if he learned this behavior there, the nurses must go straight from the ED to the psych floor -- as patients. I know he gives my staff breakdowns. Even a year after the implementation of Wendworth-Thompson, Kel still gets worried about running a code by radio. So rather than dealing with it constructively, he picnics on whichever member of the staff is in range. This wouldn't even have happened, if he took his own notes....
Enough! I give Sharon a look that makes her cringe. "We can get it from the tape," I say pulling the reels from the recorder. Walters clutches the spools to her breast and tries to scurry away, but her feet are entangled in the EKG paper. Kel makes a few more cutting remarks before we lock eyes. Time to take charge. I clear my throat.
FEED THE WRITER!