I worked for two years in the emergency room before I was considered one of the experienced staff members. No one ever said ‘Hey, you’re now an experienced staff member’, but certain things began to happen. The most obvious change being that I found myself working more night shifts. The weekend night shift is always the most interesting . . .
There was a commotion at the security doors. The guard rushed over and asked for help. Several of us raced to the door to find a young man being carried by a group of very angry looking people.
The young man couldn’t have been more drenched in blood if he had taken a bath in it. I have seen a fair amount of bleeding in my time, but rarely so much from one person – and never from one who was still alive.
I knew immediately who this must be. We’d had a call about ten minutes earlier from the paramedics asking if we’d had any stab victims. They’d been called to a party that was the scene of an alleged assault, but there was no victim, or witnesses. There was, however, a lot of blood, so much that they were worried somebody was seriously injured.
The young man on the other side of the security doors urgently needed our help, but there was one slight problem. We had to somehow get the victim inside to be treated, but keep the horde out, because there was no way we wanted them in the building. There must have been 20 people clamouring at the front door, yelling, angry, and probably drunk; far too many to control. With so few of us, they could easily have run riot and we would have been powerless to stop them.
This was not just about their numbers or aggression, our emergency department had a policy of no more than one family member in the resuscitation room, and they had introduced this policy for good reason. In my two years in the emergency room I’d seen and heard of plenty of incidences of violence and verbal abuse to treating staff.
In this particular case, the reasoning was even simpler; the paramedics had phoned from the scene of a party. Parties mean alcohol, and alcohol can bring out the worst in people.
As I’ve mentioned, Jamie, our security guard, wasn’t exactly intimidating. There was no way he would be able to stop the crowd from coming inside. He’d just put himself at risk trying.
‘Just stay out of their way,’ I told Jamie. ‘Stay in the background. The uniform might make you a target. You don’t want to be mistaken for a cop.’
When people are angry, police officers can often find themselves targets. Jamie was more than happy to oblige.
We eventually opened the doors and I was almost knocked over by the inrush of bodies.
‘
Fuck, do something! Fuck, you’re a fucking doctor, do something.’
Everyone was shouting and screaming at once; the only words I could hear clearly were curses. It was chaos.
I returned my attention to the victim. So far he had not shown any sign of life.
I acted on instinct alone, and grabbed on to the body. It gave me a purpose and it gave me something to focus on. The other two nurses took hold of him as well, battling with two people, who turned out to be the boy’s parents, who were not going to let go of their son.
Between the parents, me, and the two other nurses on duty that night, we managed to drag the patient past a stunned looking elderly man and on to the next resuscitation bed. The crowd of people followed us through.
I tried to explain that only two relatives could be here, but I was ignored, and decided it best not to argue.
The victim was a teenage boy. He was cold to touch and very pale. He looked as if he had been drained of all blood. There was certainly enough blood on his clothes and those around him, plus there was a trail leading out past reception to the front door. At that moment I began to worry about my own safety. I looked at my colleagues and I could tell they were thinking the same thing as me. The only help this boy could get was from a power greater than any we had to offer; he was dead.
But try telling the family there was nothing we could do. It was not an option, we had to at least make an effort, be seen to do something.
At my hospital, there was generally only one doctor on duty during the night. This was very often a junior doctor, but thankfully that evening we had Keith, an experienced practitioner with a full year of emergency room service behind him.
He jumped in with his first instructions: ‘Start compressions. I’ll try to get a line.’
It’s a bit hard to find a vein on a corpse, so Keith stuck the needle in a vein in the side of the boy’s neck. I began compressions, all the time trying to keep my fingers out of the chest wound. The stab wound was to the left side of the chest, directly into the right ventricle of the boy’s heart, which explained the extent of the bleeding. With every beat of this boy’s heart, his life had drained out of him. I tried to tune out slurping sounds coming from the wound every time I pressed down.
We continued resuscitation, knowing it was going to do no good. We poured in fluids, we poured in blood, and pumped him full of adrenaline, but it was to no avail. By this time three more nurses had come from other wards to help out. They had to fight their way through the crowd of onlookers just to get to the bedside.
‘He’s not moving. Fucking
do
something,’ screamed a giant of a man who had nearly bowled me over earlier. When Keith suggested that resuscitation should be stopped, the boy’s father responded immediately: ‘You do and you fucking die!’ He backed up his threat by pulling out a knife and brandishing it at Keith, and then me.
Keith signalled us to keep on going, even though it was well past the point of no return.
Meanwhile, out at reception, another relative of the boy was standing in front of Joanne our receptionist, painting his face. Joanne didn’t say a word as the man stuck his finger in a pool of blood and smeared it over his face. He was of Maori descent, and probably painting traditional war patterns on his face, getting ready for battle.
The receptionist didn’t have the courage to tell the man that the blood was not from the stabbing victim, but from another patient.
Thankfully, all emergency rooms I’ve ever worked in have silent alarms that can be discreetly pressed. Joanne had pressed our emergency alarm the moment the family had arrived.
It felt like hours before the police came; in reality it was only 20 minutes. When you’re in a crisis situation time changes; five minutes can seem like an eternity, or an hour can fly by and only feel like five minutes.
Half a dozen cars crammed full of officers pulled into the car park; it looked like the whole of the town’s force was here. Usually the more junior police officers ended up dealing with hospital problems, but when they came into the resuscitation room there were older, obviously senior police officers that I had never seen before.
I’d never been so relieved to see the police as I was then. It turned out they were so delayed getting here because they had all gone to the scene of the stabbing, which was at the other end of town. Thankfully our town was small enough for a stabbing to still be a big deal.
The police did a good job; they kept calm, ignored the abuse hurled at them and slowly managed to herd the crowd out of the department, with surprisingly (and thankfully) little hassle.
At that moment, resuscitation was stopped. All those who had taken turns jumping up and down doing compressions were particularly relieved; it’s tiring work. The boy was taken to the morgue and we never saw the family again. Everyone was physically and emotionally drained, but, of course, there was no time to rest, as there were more patients still to see.
There had been one other man in resus when the commotion broke out. It was 86-year-old Mr Ripley, a regular patient who came in when his breathing got bad. He and his wife had been witness to the whole scenario. I didn’t know what to say; perhaps I should’ve told him that this was not a typical Saturday night.
Mr Ripley was a veteran of the Second World War. He and his wife had been vulnerable. In all the mayhem I had forgotten about them. I cannot imagine what it would be like to face an enemy on the battlefield, but he had every reason to be as frightened as I was this night, as he sat there helpless, frail and ill, watching the madness, with no way to escape, with his wife sitting beside him. He was of course terrified for her, too.
He made a remark which I’ll never forget: ‘I’ve survived the war; seen my comrades die around me; charged machine guns; but I’ve never been as frightened as I was tonight.’
I never found out the full or true story of what happened that night, just what I read in the newspaper. It began as a family party with a few close friends. The victim had had a disagreement over a real or imagined insult about a girlfriend. The murderer was a teenage friend, who is now spending his days behind bars. The father ended up in court, although I never found out what the outcome was.
Security was increased after that incident, which meant two security guards instead of one.
As for me, well, I did just have a knife waved in my direction, but it was a busy Saturday night; there was no talk of time off or counselling. I kept on working, along with everyone else.
The previous two nights had been the busiest I’d seen in the whole year. We had a record number of drunken teenagers, a worrying number of assaults, six overdoses and five GDGAPWs, which stands for: got drunk, got angry, punched wall. The W can also be substituted for window.
As I pulled into work on the third evening, I wasn’t greeted with the most encouraging of sights. Four ambulances were fighting to offload their burden and two police cars took up the last of the parking spaces; I felt like turning around. To make matters worse, there was a full moon in the sky. If I had noticed that before I had left home, I might have been tempted to call in sick. It was going to be a very interesting night.
‘Evening all; looks like the madmen will be out in full force tonight,’ I said by way of greeting.
‘Too late, they’re out already,’ said Trish.
Trish had been on with me for the last two nights. She looked tired, and was showing the typical signs of someone at the end of a six-night run. She was a touch more cynical, a tad more sarcastic, and a wee bit short tempered. She was the lucky one, because I still had another two nights in front of me. My other partner in crime that night was Amber. This was Amber’s first time on night shift.
She smiled appropriately at our comments, as any new junior member of staff should, but I could tell she was not a believer.
‘It’s true, the full moon really does affect people,’ I added. ‘By the time the night is through you will see for yourself.’
I’ve never found any scientific evidence to substantiate the belief that the full moon affects people, but I have heard that some places provide an extra nurse when it’s a full moon. I’ve even heard of some police departments deploying more officers.
My first patient for the evening was Mr Jones, one of our frequent flyers. His complaint was always the same: chest pain.
For some reason, Mr Jones’s chest pain got miraculously better every time the paramedics wheeled him through the front door.
It’s quite possible Mr Jones never had much chest pain to begin with. That type of patient isn’t an unusual sight; there are many people in the community who are just in need of some company or reassurance.
Before I could begin assessing Mr Jones, we heard raised voices and cursing. It was coming from next door in minor injuries.
‘Fuck the lot of ya’ – it was a woman’s voice – ‘you’re all bloody useless.’
I didn’t want to investigate, but I made my way next door to see if anyone needed a hand. I walked in to find Amber trying to calm down an irate giant of a woman. She must have been six foot three inches tall, at least, and I estimated she weighed at least 130 kilograms. She had covered her flesh in a fluffy nightgown; it was pink with a white trim, and decorated with flowers.
‘What’re you staring at, ya little pervert?’ she asked.
‘This is Miss Turner. She won’t wait to be seen,’ Amber explained.
‘I’m bloody sick and nobody believes me.’
The woman stank of beer and spirits. She wasn’t sick; she was drunk.
‘We believe you, we believe you,’ said Amber, trying her best to placate the giant, ‘but there are others sicker than you. You’re going to have to wait.’
The woman conceded and sat back down on the bed.
‘I’ll leave you to it, Amber. Give me a yell if you need a hand,’ I said and headed back next door.
‘You can’t please them all,’ said Mr Jones, as I prepared to jab a needle into a bulging vein on his right forearm.
‘You mean the commotion next door?’
He nodded.
‘I’ve given up trying to. I’ve learnt that some people cannot be reasoned with,’ I added, sliding the needle into his vein. ‘I imagine I haven’t heard the last yelling and screaming tonight.’
‘They come out of the woodwork on nights like these. The full moon can drive a man mad. Stay inside and lock the door,’ Mr Jones advised.
That sounded like a great idea to me, but unfortunately hospitals tend to have an open door policy, and anyway, it had already begun . . .
‘Someone get security, hurry,’ came Amber’s voice from beyond the wall.
‘Be right back,’ I told Mr Jones and rushed out. I needn’t have been worried; well, at least not about Amber’s safety.
‘Put it back on, please, Miss Turner,’ Amber pleaded as she tried to wrap a sheet around her patient.
Miss Turner was standing beside her bed completely naked. Her pink dressing gown was lying on the floor next to a far too small hospital nightgown.
‘I’m not wearing a fucking sheet. If you can’t find anything to fit me, I’ll wear fucking nothing.’
The wisest thing to have done at that moment would have been to look away, but my eyes kept being drawn to the multiple loose folds of hanging flesh. It was like a scene from ‘Ripley’s Believe It or Not’, when you know they are about to show you something gruesome, but your morbid curiosity gets the better of you.
‘Fucking pervert,’ Miss Turner yelled, and made her way towards me.
I was about to be assaulted by a gigantic, intoxicated, naked woman. I briefly thought back to my nursing college days, and tried to remember what they taught you to do in a situation like this. I began to back out of the room, while looking around for some help.
‘Hurry up and get security, Amber,’ I called out.
‘I’m here already,’ said a voice behind me.
I glanced over my shoulder to see Jamie.
‘I’m not fucking scared of you,’ yelled Miss Turner at us. We did not doubt her. She continued to advance, while we men continued to retreat.
‘You need to put some clothes on, Miss Turner,’ said Jamie.
Good old Jamie, keeping it practical as always.
‘Miss Turner, if you don’t put your clothes back on we’ll have to call the police,’ I explained, but this seemed to enrage her more than anything else.
‘Fuck the pigs. I’m fucking sick and you’re fucking with me. And now you’re gonna call the pigs.’
I never got a chance to call the police because she chose this moment to make a run at Jamie and me. We split up, giving each of us a 50 per cent chance of survival, but thankfully she charged straight past us and out into the main corridor of the hospital.
‘I’ve never seen so much flesh move so fast in my life,’ said Jamie.
‘I never realised it could bounce around so much,’ I replied. ‘She’s all yours, Jamie. Good luck.’
‘You’ve got to be bloody joking. How the hell am I going to stop that? She only has to sit on me and that would be my end.’
He had a point. He really didn’t stand a chance.
‘At least follow her. Try to stop her from entering any of the wards and I’ll call the police.’
Again, I never got a chance to call the police. At that moment an ambulance crew turned up with a teenage girl clutching her stomach and hysterical with pain.
‘What’s the problem?’ I asked.
She didn’t say a word, but just screamed louder, all the time rocking back and forth clutching her stomach.
‘She said she is having a miscarriage,’ Tim, the head paramedic, answered for her. ‘But she won’t let any of us examine her. We don’t have any obs. We haven’t checked for any bleeding. Anytime we try to do something, she screams a little louder. She said she only wants a woman to see her.’
‘Amber, can I leave her with you?’
Amber may have been new to the emergency room, but she was still an experienced nurse and I knew she could handle one hysterical 16-year-old girl.
‘No problem.’ She sounded almost relieved to have a somewhat normal patient, with a normal problem, or at least so we thought. I returned to my original patient, Mr Jones. I had a funny suspicion he was relishing the live entertainment.
‘Cripes, mate; it’s not every day you see something like that. Heck, I’ve never seen
anything
like it. It’s the younger generation, no respect for anything. Such a big lass as well. I wouldn’t want to cross her.’
I smothered a smile at his comment – it certainly wasn’t the first time I’d heard the older generation lamenting the faults of the young – as Miss Blake, the miscarriage patient, was wheeled past us by Amber.
Trish was standing by and helped Amber place Miss Blake in the bed opposite Mr Jones.
‘Poor little thing, what’s wrong with her? You better go see to her,’ Mr Jones advised me.
Miss Lisa Blake was a tiny looking little thing. She looked at least two or three years younger than 16.
‘She’s in good hands, Mr Jones. Trish and Amber will sort her out.’
As I examined Mr Jones, I could hear everything that Trish and the young girl had to say.
‘I’m bleeding; I’m losing the baby,’ sobbed Lisa. ‘Oh the pain, please help me. Please help my baby.’
Trish remained calm. In fact, glancing up I’d have said she looked almost bored.
‘Before we can help you, we will need a urine sample. I’ll show you where the bathroom is.’
‘You want me to pee! I’m in pain. Oh . . .’ Lisa clutched her arms around her midsection and began rocking back and forth.
But Trish was not going to budge, and five minutes later, Lisa limped back into the room and handed her urine sample to Trish before crawling back on to the bed.
Trish wasted no time testing the urine.
‘I’ve got some good news for you, Lisa,’ said Trish. ‘You’re not going to lose your baby. Your test was negative: you’re not pregnant. And you don’t have to worry about bleeding either. There was only a small trace of blood in your urine. You’re going to be fine.’
Lisa seemed to have completely forgotten about her pain; she had stopped clutching her stomach and ceased her rocking.
‘It’s not true. I am pregnant. The test is wrong. I’m in pain.’
Trish stood, unmoved.
Lisa stood up and walked out of the department, without a word or even a glance behind her.
‘I told you Trish knows what she’s doing,’ I said to Mr Jones.
With Mr Jones pain free, his blood samples taken, and observations all up to date, it was time to turn my attention elsewhere. Because there were fewer nurses on during the night shift, you ended up working in all areas of the emergency room. Our department had four areas: minor injuries; moderate illness and injuries; four resuscitation beds for the most serious patients; and triage. With no other patients in resus, I went in search of Amber to see how she was coping. I found her at the front desk.
‘Thank goodness you’re here. It’s turned into a madhouse,’ Amber said, gesturing to the full waiting room. With all our time being taken up with Lisa and Miss Turner, the room had been rapidly filling up; people were even sitting on the floor.
‘How much longer do we have to wait?’ asked a middle-aged woman, who went on to introduce herself as Mrs Kelley. ‘We’ve been here hours. This is ridiculous. I demand that something be done.’
Mrs Kelley was with her 18-year-old son. He had been out on the town and become involved in what was probably his first punch-up. From the look of him he had a broken nose.
‘Probably quite a while longer yet,’ I replied. ‘You should take your son home and get some rest. There is nothing we can do for him tonight,’ I added.
I wasn’t in the mood for diplomacy, and this was completely true. There is nothing you can do immediately for a broken nose, even if it is out of shape; you have to wait for the swelling to go down.
Most people in the waiting room seemed to be enjoying the distraction. But I could see Mrs Kelley’s hackles rising.
‘I demand to be seen immediately or I will be writing to the papers.’
I don’t respond well to the word demand and nor do most nurses I know, but I made one more attempt at being polite before turning to address the patient list. ‘We have some other patients who need to be seen first.’ I turned and walked away, leaving Mrs Kelley to ponder about her potential moment in the media.
Then I heard something surprising. Something I’d never heard before in a hospital, and to this day haven’t heard since; I heard singing.
‘Why are we waiting? Why are we waiting?’
It started with Mrs Kelley, but soon other voices joined in. Amber and Trish joined me in the corridor, stunned at what was going on before us.
‘Has this ever happened before?’ I asked Trish.
‘This is a first for me. I feel like I’m in a Monty Python film,’ she replied.
‘What do we do?’ Amber asked.
‘Leave them,’ Trish said. ‘They will soon get sick and tired—’
‘Help!’ yelled Jamie from afar. ‘She’s bloody mad. I can’t stop her.’
It was coming from behind the waiting room. We rushed out past the singing crowd and into the main hospital corridor to find Jamie being chased by Miss Turner. She was like a rampaging bull, huge, unstoppable and terrifying when provoked.
Jamie reached us, and we tried to form a human barrier.
‘Oh shit, she’s not stopping,’ Jamie and I blurted out in unison.
At least the singing had stopped. The crowd of onlookers in the waiting room had gathered around behind us to see the spectacle. I don’t know if they actually thought we could stop this giant pink-slippered woman before she reached them, but there was no way I was going to risk life and limb.
We sidestepped just in time.
Miss Turner collided with the crowd, taking out at least half a dozen onlookers before losing her balance.
If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I would never have believed what had just happened. All we could do was laugh. I’ve never seen a waiting room emptied so quickly. Even Mrs Kelley and her son didn’t wait to be seen.
Miss Turner never got to see a doctor; she soon decided to put her clothes back on, and disappeared into the night.
That was four hours of my shift over with, only four more to go.