Beat up. Just completely beat up, dammit.
Three code reds... two from an MVA, one GSW.
The first two came in at the same time... a mother and daughter. There was an "accident" about six blocks from the hospital. A vehicle, driven by a drunk, ran a stop sign at a high rate of speed, T-boned the vehicle these women were driving. The drunk was driving without light with the cops in pursuit.
Last night was the first of three nights that I will have extra help... I'm training the girl who will be working opposite of me on the seven-day shifts. And it was a good thing that I had the help, and even then I had to call in the CT tech.
The daughter had multiple internal injuries and blood inside of her skull, as did the mother. Both were unconscious with obvious neural damage.
Later, we heard (I assume from relatives) that the girl was pregnant with a 20-week fetus.
No fetal heartbeat was detected.
The guy that hit them was treated at the other hospital for minor (relatively) injuries and released to the custody of the police.
Justice? Nope, but that's the way the world works.
Once that was cleared away, we got ready to do the AM portables in the Unit, and we were paged for another code red. This was the GSW... chest shot. The guy was 22 or so, sitting in his chair in his house minding his own business; the bullet came in through an open window and went through two internal walls before hitting him.
It was a relatively small-caliber piece of lead, and the cops thought it was from a rifle. He had a hemopneumothorax, and the doc put in a chest tube, so he should be OK. Pretty damned lucky for one so unlucky. He could have easily been killed...
I didn't get my portables done until after 07:00.
Up 24 hours on four or five hours of sleep... I must be a maniac. And goofy, too. I was trying to tell one of the nurses about the chest x-ray... try mis-pronouncing pneumohemothorax, or even hemopheumothorax, several times in a row and see how goofy you sound!
I. Must. Sleep. Now.
NOW!!! (You need to imagine Jim Morrison-Doors echo effects here...)
O'wait! It's Karen's birthday! E-mail her at karen@nilknarf.net. Seventeen years ago today, she came over to my house in Oakland to ask me how to get rid of her alcoholic boyfriend. This was about a year after I dumped her, she figgered that since I was so good at it she would get my advice.
We sat out in my porch swing and talked and drank beer. And I burned a hole in her blouse (and left a scar on her left upper breast) when a coal dropped off of my cigarette when I had my arm around her.
It was the start of something big.
I sobered up and smartened up and asked her to marry me about six months later. I'll tell that story sometime. That one, and my last stint in the jailhouse...