It was a pretty cool night in the ER; I had been standing around flirting with the nurses, because the hospital as a whole was

It was a pretty cool night in the ER; I had been standing around flirting with the nurses, because the hospital as a whole was quiet. As a trauma X-ray tech, I didn’t have anything to do.

I was setting up an assignation with a new, pretty nurse when the squawk box squawked. Code red: MVA. ETA: six minutes. And again: Code red, MVA:six minutes. And yet again: code red, MVA, six minutes.

I sauntered over to the Traumex room, a code room that had superb X-ray equipment in the room: instantaneous images.

Made sure that the portable unit was ready to go, made sure that everything was ready for three code reds. I would have one patient in the traumex room, and two in rooms one and two.

We would not have IDs initially, and I set the computers to reflect that: TR1, TR2, TR3. The images would be OK, computer-wise.

The first ambulance pulled in to the ER: possible C-spine fracture, flail chest. Good pulse and rhythm. In to the traumex room. In three minutes I had imaged his C-spine and his chest. No other major trauma. OK on the C-spine, hemo/pneumo-thorax. The doc put in a chest tube immediately.

The second ambulance had come in while I was doing imaging on the first one. The patient had major injuries to the pelvis and from there on down- his legs were just barely attached. The doc had ordered a chest film after a cursory initial exam, and I put the receptor plate under him and made the exposure.

The doc on duty poked his head into the curtain: he wanted another chest image on the traumex patient: and he mentioned that the patient that I was working with would be last in the triage. He didn’t really have a chance. Even if he had been the only one, he didn’t have a chance. Too much trauma, too much blood loss.

His heartbeat was getting irregular as I pulled the imaging plate out from under the patient, a kid about 20 years old, with a beautiful Harley-Davidson tattoo on his hairless chest.

And he opened his eyes.

And he said, “I’m gonna die, ain’t I?”

I took his hand and told him, “Yeah, I’m sorry, my friend”.

He looked into my eyes.

I looked into his eyes, hazel and alert.

He said, “thank you”. His eyes closed, and he flatlined.

And I stood there a minute, looking at his dead eyes, holding his dead hand… and I thought about how beautiful that tattoo would look in a frame on my living-room wall.

The third patient was DOA.

The assignation with the pretty ER nurse? Didn’t work out.

She went home and overdosed on medication that she stole during the trauma.

Sometimes life is both hard and ugly.