Angels in the ER (25 page)

Danny told me the story, repeating most of the information I had been given earlier. But then he added some information he had gathered from the sheriff’s deputies who had been in the York ER with this woman.

“It seems, Doc, this woman has a long mental history. She and her two sisters had been causin’ some disturbances in town over the
past couple of days. Approachin’ people on the street and threatenin’ them with voodoo stuff and whatnot. Went into one of the stores downtown and started singin’ and chantin’. This patient here, Ethel, seemed to be the worst. Finally, the deputies locked ’em all up. Sometime yesterday, I think. And that’s when it got weird.”

He paused, glancing over to room 5. Lori and the other EMT had transferred Ethel from the rescue squad’s stretcher to our bed. She seemed to be peaceful enough at this point, sitting calmly, her arms still folded, her blue towel securely in place. Kathy Neal had stepped into the room and was watching from a safe distance.

Before Danny started again, I spoke to Lynne. “Go ahead and call Security. We’ll need someone to stay with her until we can figure out what to do.”

I turned back to Danny, and he continued. “One of my friends at the jail told me he locked the three sisters in the same cell, and they just huddled up in a corner, and were just rockin’ back and forth and mumblin’ stuff. Then things got real quiet, and he went back to take a peek, to make sure everything was okay. Man, that must have been when it started. Ethel here, she had her fingers in her mouth, like she was trying to get somethin’ out. And she was. She was pullin’ out her tongue, piece by piece with her fingers. And she finally pulled it all out, every bit of it.”

He stopped, shaking his head.

“She what?” I asked. Now this was a little far-fetched. I had seen a lot of tongue injuries in my years in the ER. Kids falling, landing on their chins, and splitting the tips or sides of their tongues. I had even had an eighteen-year-old who came in one night telling me his girlfriend had gotten mad at him, then professed forgiveness and kissed him. During this kiss she had bitten off and swallowed the tip of his tongue. But it had only been the tip, a dime-sized piece, and it had only required a couple of stitches to repair. But ripping out your own tongue with your fingers? Impossible.

“Yep,” Danny went on. “Every bit of it. Gone. And the funny thing, Doc, is it didn’t even bleed very much. I woulda thought she
woulda bled like a stuck pig, but she didn’t. I guess it clotted off or somethin’.”

“Why in the world would she do something like that?” I asked him, studying Ethel from a distance. She had begun to slowly and rhythmically rock forward and then backward.

“Her sister told the deputy she was tired of evil spirits speakin’ through her and was gonna put a stop to it. And that’s why she’s got that nasty towel on her head—to keep the spirits from getting in. Just try to take that thing off. She’ll snatch your hand quick as a flash.”

“Hmm,” I mused. This was pretty interesting, even though I doubted the seriousness of her tongue injury. No one would be capable of pulling their own tongue out. But the fact remained that I would have to sort this thing out and find something to do with Ms. Ethel.

“Well, thanks, Danny. And if you find yourself in the York ER again tonight, thank Dr. Frost for me.”

“Sure thing, Doc,” he replied. His face showed puzzlement over this last remark.

A security guard was walking up the hall as I approached room 5. In this case, the term may have been a little self-contradictory. This seventy-plus-year-old gentleman might be a guard, but he didn’t look too secure, nor did he inspire much of a sense of security. Our hospital was not unlike many others. In their attempt to hold down expenses, they hired the cheapest security group they could find, which meant we usually had retired individuals, unarmed and untrained. But they had spiffy uniforms. Ed was one of our regular night-time guards, and he was quiet and pleasant enough. But on the occasion of a real problem in the department he had the habit of disappearing. Hopefully, watching Ethel would not be too taxing a job for him.

“Ed, pull up a chair here and just keep an eye on her,” I said, leading him into room 5 and pointing to a corner of the room.

Lori was taking Ethel’s blood pressure as I walked over to the bed.

“Ms…” I paused, glancing at the clipboard lying by her side, “Jones.
I’m Dr. Lesslie. We’re here to help you tonight, and to see what we can do for you.”

She didn’t respond. She just kept rocking and staring straight ahead. I glanced at Lori and she looked at me, shaking her head.

I needed to try. “So, Ethel, let me take a look at your mouth.”

To my surprise, she stopped rocking, turned her head toward me, and opened her mouth. I mean
really
opened it. Not wanting to lose the opportunity, I grabbed the wall-mounted flashlight and took a look.

I was shocked! It takes a lot to surprise me, but I was truly taken aback.

“Holy—” I began, but stopped, catching myself. I was still the doctor here, and needed to at least appear calm and in control.

But, “Holy smoke,” I muttered to myself. “It
was
gone!” Her tongue was completely ripped out. I leaned in and took a closer look. It had been torn out to its very root. There was nothing left, just a nub at the back of her mouth. To my amazement, there was no bleeding, just a few clots covering the stump.

Lori was peering over my shoulder and I heard a faint gasp. We looked at each other, but neither of us said a word.

I stood up and replaced the flashlight in its holder. Ethel closed her mouth and resumed her upright posture, staring straight ahead but rocking in a different direction now, from side to side.

I walked out of the room, Lori beside me. Ed was seated in the corner, his legs crossed and his arms tightly folded across his chest. He was a comical vision. His bright-red baseball cap was askew, its rolled bill pointing to his left shoulder. And his narrow navy-blue tie had flipped over and settled on the right side of his chest. Yet he was deadly serious about his assignment, not taking his eyes off his charge as he began his vigil.

“Wow,” Lori said. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“I don’t think I have either,” I agreed, stroking my beard and beginning to wonder just what I was going to do with this woman.

Over the next hour, the prospects of finding a reasonable solution to this dilemma became dimmer and dimmer.

I made a few phone calls to our local docs, to see if one of the ENT specialists would take a look at this woman. The doctor on call had already been contacted by Dr. Frost and told me the same thing he had told him. “Robert, it sounds like this lady needs to see a psychiatrist. That’s probably where you should start.”

And you can imagine what the psychiatrist offered. “Robert, this is a medical problem first. Get her squared away with that, and we can take a look at her later on. And good luck.”

Yeah. Good luck.

I passed all this on to Lori and asked her to be considering what we might be able to do. For the moment I was stuck. But at least Ethel was calm, and she was stable. There was absolutely no bleeding from her mouth.

Ed had given Ethel a small pad of paper and a ballpoint pen. “Figger she can’t talk to us, and if she needs somethin’, she can just write it on that paper there.” He pointed to the pad that lay at the foot of the stretcher, seemingly unnoticed by Ms. Jones.

It was then that Ethel started. I was standing at the nurses’ station and absently looking in her direction. Slowly her right arm went into the air and her torso turned toward Ed. Her index finger was extended, curled, and began to slowly make circles in the air. Suddenly, she pointed directly at Ed, and her head began shaking violently. Her eyes were wide open, and she seemed to be mumbling something, though it was completely incoherent. I thought our security guard was going to fall on the floor. There was a look of complete and paralyzing fear on his face. He had pushed his chair back against the wall as far as it would go, but that wasn’t far enough. He slowly stood and edged sideways out of the room, never taking his eyes off Ethel. And she never took her eyes off him. She tracked him out of the room with her finger, her head shaking, her silent lips working feverishly.

“She’s puttin’ some kinda voodoo thing on me, Doc. That ain’t right. I don’t got to put up with this. No, sir,” Ed told me, stepping out into the hallway. He hitched up his pants and said, “I’ll just stand
right over here, if it’s all right with you.” He quickly walked around the corner, out of Ethel’s gaze, and stood leaning against the wall.

Lori had stepped into room 5 and was trying to calm our patient. She patted her gently on her shoulder, and in a moment, all was again under control. Ed stayed in the hallway, out of Ethel’s sight.

It wasn’t long after that Ethel picked up the pad of paper and began writing. I was tempted to ask Ed to see what she had written, but thought better of it.

I walked over to her, and glanced down at the pad. “Bathroom.”

“Lori,” I called out. This was something I couldn’t help her with.

A few moments later, Lori was leading Ethel down the hallway, and it was quite a sight. Lori held her by the elbow, or I guess it was her elbow. Ethel was a great moving mound of sheets which had been indecorously draped around her. She was barefooted, shuffling along and looking from side to side. On top of her head was the blue towel.

I watched as they approached Ed, who pressed himself into the wall as they passed, his chin tucked into his chest. I chuckled at this, and then was startled by a scream and the loud clamor of metal pans banging and clanging on the floor. I could see the shiny stainless steel basins and bowls as they cascaded out of the ENT room.

It seems that Kathy, our novice nurse, had been working in this room, restocking and straightening up. She’d been carrying an armful of pans when she stepped to the doorway, looked up, and saw Ethel standing in front of her. That was all it took. She had dropped everything she was carrying and run down the hall. Later, she would confess she had wet her pants.

At 5:45 a.m., Lori struck upon the idea that would save us. “Why don’t you see who’s on call for ENT at one of the hospitals in Columbia, and see if they will accept her? Maybe the doctor in York didn’t really call anybody down there.”

“Hmm, that’s a good idea,” I responded, glad for any help from any quarter. Dr. Frost had said he’d called some docs in Columbia,
but given his irresponsible actions, there was a good chance he hadn’t. Now I was
hoping
he hadn’t.

“Lynne, why don’t you call down to Columbia General, talk to the secretary in the ER, and see who’s covering ENT for them tonight. See if you can get them on the phone.”

Fifteen minutes later, the phone rang. Lynne answered. “Dr. Lesslie, it’s for you. A Dr. Bissel in Columbia.”

I had never heard of a Dr. Bissel, but it didn’t matter.

I picked up the receiver. Dr. Bissel was on call for his ENT group, and I explained Ethel’s circumstances to him. I told him she clearly had a psych problem, but the overriding concern now was the injury to her tongue. I’m not sure he was completely awake, because he agreed to accept her. He instructed me to have her sent to the ER at Columbia General and he would take care of things from there.

“Thanks a lot, Dr. Bissel,” I told him. “We’ll get her on the road.”

I hung up the receiver and looked at Lynne and Lori. “Whatever happens,
do not
answer that phone. If Dr. Bissel wakes up and changes his mind, I don’t want to know about it. Let’s get her on the interstate as fast as we can.”

“I’ve already called EMS,” Lori told me.

Twenty minutes later, one of our paramedic teams had transferred Ethel to their stretcher and was wheeling her out of the department. They came by the nurses’ station, where I stood with Lori, and paused while she finished completing the required transfer papers.

I looked down at the sad figure on the stretcher. What circumstances had brought Ethel to this point? Was it no more than faulty neural connections in her brain? Or were she and her sisters right about the demonic spirits? Whatever the cause, the effect was a destroyed life. There was a darkness here, and I sensed it was more powerful than any medication we could offer her.

Lori folded the completed documents. She put them in a large envelope and handed this to the paramedic standing at the head of
the stretcher. Then she said, “Good night, Ms. Jones. I hope that everything goes well for you.”

Ethel didn’t respond. She just stared straight ahead, wrapped in a hospital sheet, the blue towel still on her head. Then she looked at me and held out her hand. She opened her fingers to reveal a crumpled, sweat-soaked piece of paper. I stared at it. At first I didn’t move. She nodded, and thrust her hand closer to me. There was nothing to do. I took the piece of paper.

The stretcher was moving toward the ambulance entrance. Ethel twisted her torso and stared at me, her eyes large and unblinking.

Unfolding the piece of paper, I read, “It will turn green and fall off.”

Somehow I knew she wasn’t talking about my nose.

Looking up, I saw the doors closing behind Ethel and her entourage, and then they were gone.

Everyone in the department was going about their normal duties. I didn’t say anything to anyone, just dropped the scrap of paper into a nearby trash can.