They say there's no such thing as a boring day in the ER—and they're probably right. But some days are more interesting than most.
Say, for example, a man comes in because he's having terrible chest pain. He's eighty-six years old. He's been smoking a pack a day since he was thirteen. Four kids, doting wife, a nice home in the country build with money hard-earned by 52 long years working in a saw mill. He crashes, and the room buzzes with activity. This is the status quo. If he lives, that's great! If he dies, that's a tragedy. But it's not really exciting. It happens every day. Sometimes twice. Sometimes more.
No, what happened today, that was exciting.
So we have Slob A, being wheeled in on a gurney, right? That's what happens in hospitals—people come in on gurneys, in varying stages of life and death. That's not surprising, and it sure as hell isn't exciting. Neither is Slob A. Slob A is sort of fat, sort of old, and sort of drunk—the smell of cheap, stale beer isn't hard to miss. LOC is non-existent and he looks, frankly, gross. As if he'd be greasy to the touch.
But that's pretty much normal around here, too.
Where it starts to get interesting, insofar as mayhem and death and communicable illness can be interesting, is in the fact that this isn't just a skid-row bum with alcohol poisoning. No, this guy is…well, no one really knows. He's diseased. Maybe it's auto-immune, maybe it's viral, but this man is sick. Very sick. His temperature's through the roof, and still climbing. Ice packs and cold compresses fly around the room as they try to stabilize him, and all the while no one has a clue what's got a hold of him, if it's communicable, or even if it's treatable.
Okay, that's a little fascinating.
But the real pizzazz comes with Slob B. Slob B is apparently Slob A's friend. He says Slob A was driving when he lost consciousness; it's sort of hard to make sense of things and no one really wants to talk to him either, because he also looks pretty gross. Slob B has a child with him. She's crying, which is really sad, but also kind of hard to take completely seriously, because she's caked in make up. Really garish make-up—like a child applied it. I guess, realistically, one probably did.
At any rate, that's the picture. We have Slob A on the gurney, stinking of alcohol and slowly roasting in his own body, Slob B doing a mediocre job of bring the only lucid adult in whatever weird family dynamic they have going on, and Child C—bless her heart-wailing as her father effectively dies in front of her.
No one said medical practice was pretty.
So Slob A—excuse me—Patient A takes a turn for the worse. (Or, more accurately, keeps on driving straight down the Awfulness Expressway.) The escalating hyperpyrexia gets the better of him, and he crashes, and then all hell breaks lose, but in the end nothing can really be done for the man and what we're left with is Child C crying over Corpse A while Slob B does not a whole damn lot. And that's not exciting. It's just sort of sad, because no matter how tacky the family unit, it sucks to lose a parent.
But then things get exciting again. The will of the body to survive triumphs and the next thing we know Corpse A registers a pulse and suddenly he isn't Corpse A but Patient A again, and everyone rejoices. It's a medical miracle. Life will find a way. All that good stuff.
Patient A's fever begins to fade, he's stabilized, and him and his entourage are sent upstairs where he'll rest, recoup, and hopefully be back out doing whatever he does in a few days. Paperwork is filed, admittance finalized, bracelets applied, and the scrubs are sent in to tidy the ER workspace for the next disaster that comes in. Stray, half-melted cold packs litter the bed. There's a row of false eyelashes floating in a beaker of rubbing alcohol. When you're the low-end of the totem pole, you don't really care. A tired looking LVN pours the alcohol, contaminate and all, down the sink. The remaining ice follows.
Six weeks later there's a car accident. A man and his young son are rushed into the ER. They're both critical. The cycle continues.