Monday morning. The last day of trial … I hope.

Several members of the jury were quite upset with the judge because he called in sick on Friday. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who planned on the trial being over with last week.

I wasn’t able to find coverage for my 24-hour shift yesterday, so I had to work all night. I usually get at least a few hours of sleep at night. Of course, as fate would have it, last night was so busy that I was lucky to get an hour of sleep.

Things had finally settled down in the ED and I was getting ready to hit the couch in the doctor’s lounge when a young lady came in for evaluation. She had been involved in a fight with her boyfriend three days earlier and, after drinking a wee bit too much peppermint schnapps at 1:30 in the morning, she came in to be checked out and to make a police report against her boyfriend.

I had just finished talking with the police about this young lady when another police car rolled up to the ambulance bay. An ambulance pulled in along side of it. Police officer and paramedic escorted in a young man who was bleeding from various aspects of his head and face. An anonymous caller had notified police that there was someone passed out in a church parking lot. Why someone was driving through a church parking lot at three o’clock in the morning was beyond me. It was near zero degrees outside and by all rights, this kid should have frozen to death. Whomever called the police probably saved his life.

The story gets better, though.

When police saw that this young man was still breathing, they called paramedics, leaving him laying on the ground until paramedics arrived. The ambulance sirens apparently stimulated the “fight or flight” response in the patient and he chose the latter. As the paramedics pulled up, suddenly the patient sat bolt upright, jumped to his feet, and began running away from them. The paramedics chased him, telling him to stop because they were only trying to help. No sooner were the words out of their mouths than the patient ran right into the side view mirror of a truck and broke the mirror, sustaining a large gash to his forehead. The laws of inertia caused the upper half of his body to stop motion while the lower half of his body continued its getaway. The sudden change in the center of gravity, combined with the effects of alcohol on the patient’s sense of balance, caused him to fall backwards hitting the back of his head on the running board of the truck, and then landing back on the ground from which he had previously so suddenly arisen.

By the time the patient arrived in the emergency department, it was obviously that he was intoxicated. There was a mixture of blood and vomitus matted to his hair and he had a large palpable hematoma to the back of his head. Apparently he had done something to upset the paramedics as well. The paramedics, in order to check him for other injuries, had cut off his coat and other clothing in order to perform a thorough examination. They left his underwear intact, but most of the rest of his clothes looked like something from an old Incredible Hulk movie.

When I walked in to examine him, he had a strong odor of Miller Genuine Draft about him and was not able to answer my questions appropriately. We had to shave part of his head to examine the injuries and so that I could see the laceration on the back of his head to sew it. Fortunately, the injuries were not severe. We found a large lump in the pile of shredded nylon sitting against the wall – formerly known as the patient’s coat. On further examination, we extracted an unopened tallboy can of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. My ability to discern between odors emitted by rival beer companies had obviously been affected by my lack of sleep.

After radiating his cranium and repairing his lacerations, we attached him to a monitor and tucked him into bed so that he could sleep it off.

The waiting room was empty throughout the night, but there was a constant flux of patients into and out of the ED rooms.

Early in the morning, the intoxicated patient’s father called the emergency department. He had called several emergency departments in the area and was happy to find that his son was safe. The nurse told the father to bring some clothing and coat. The father was quite upset. “They cut his coat off AGAIN!?” The nurses replied “Well . . . yes they did, sir.” Apparently this was not the first time that the young man had been picked up by paramedics. His drinking was becoming an expensive habit.

The father showed up about 30 minutes later with a bag of clothing. He appeared somewhat upset — more so with his son than with the situation. I handed the father the tallboy can of Pabst Blue Ribbon and he told me to throw it away. I considered saving it for later, but opted to crack the can open and dump it down the sink, reacquainting my nostrils with the distinct PBR odor.

The shift ended as it began … busy. After signing over all of the patients to the oncoming physician, I went into the call room and changed my clothes from scrubs to a suit, changing my identity from physician to defendant.
I forgot a tie.
Dammit.

Stopped at the donut shop down the street from the hospital and got an extra large cup of coffee for the trip into the city.

I had to stop at the men’s clothing shop on the way to court to purchase another tie. Different clerk this time. Apparently he realized that I was in a hurry. He asked me what I was looking for. I told him I needed something to match my suit. He quickly picked out a very nice tie that I was ready to purchase until I flipped over the tag and saw that it cost $125. I was ready to walk out and go to court without a tie when the salesman found one “in the back” that cost $50. Fine. It was a “steal” compared to the one I bought there last week. I’ll stop in to check out the underwear aisle next week.

I just wanted to get to court.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 12th, 2009 at 6:02 am and is filed under Trial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.