Angels on the Night Shift (24 page)

“It’s a dog, and he’s in ENT,” she informed me matter-of-factly. “Or she. I couldn’t tell which.”

“What’s a dog doing in the ER?” I asked her, looking down at the clipboard in front of me.
Elva Wilson—69 yr old F.
It was the clipboard for the patient in ENT, and the chief complaint written at the top of the paper was “Nerves tore up.”

“You’ll have to figure that one out,” she chuckled.

I picked up the chart and headed down the hallway.

My hand was on the doorknob, when the dog started barking again. Actually it was more of a yelp or a yip, not really much of a bark.
It must be something small,
I thought.

Stepping into the room, I was assaulted by the odor of mothballs and garlic. Sitting on the stretcher was Elva Wilson, and in her lap was a King Charles spaniel, its eyes now focused unflinchingly on me.

“Ms. Wilson, I’m Dr. Lesslie,” I told her, closing the door behind me.

Elva was…well, she was unusual. Her hair was died a bright orange-red, and her ruby-red lipstick had been applied with less than consummate skill. It was smeared onto her cheeks and chin, though she didn’t seem to mind or even know. Mascara had streaked down her face, and she was only making it worse by dabbing the tears from her eyes. She wore a navy-blue housecoat and bright pink slippers.

“Hello, Dr. Lesslie,” she sobbed out. “I’m Elva Wilson, and this is Princess,” she added, looking down at her pup. Her accent was heavy, eastern European—maybe Hungarian.

On cue, the tiny dog wagged her tail and yipped at me.

“Ahem!”

Startled, I turned around to see an elderly man standing in the corner of the room. I hadn’t noticed him when I came in, and until now he hadn’t made a sound.

“This is my husband, Barney,” she introduced us.

The man took an Atlanta Braves baseball cap from the top of his head, crumpled it in his hands, and bowed slightly to me. His attire was eclectic—a multicolored paisley shirt, pants that were checkered light blue and dark blue, and much-worn leather sandals over white socks.

“Mr. Wilson,” I said, bowing in turn. “Nice to meet you.”

Elva let out a loud wail and began drying her eyes again. Princess looked up at her, confused and upset. Not able to think of anything better to do, she looked back at me and started yelping.

I looked down at the chart and again read “Nerves tore up.”
Where should I start?

“Dr. Lesslie, you need to do something for Elva.” Barney spoke clearly, with no accent and with obvious concern for his wife. He stood there, wringing his cap in his hands and looking at me with pleading in his eyes.

“Tell me what’s going on,” I asked.

Elva let out another wail, and this time Princess looked up at the ceiling and howled.

“You need to x-ray the dog,” he said, and then just stared at me.

“The dog,” I said, trying as hard as I could to appear serious. “Why do we need to x-ray Princess?”

“Oohhh!” Elva moaned. This time I didn’t turn to her, but kept looking at her husband.

“Yes, you need to x-ray the dog,” he began to explain. “A little while ago, Princess ate one of Elva’s rings, her favorite, the diamond that her grandmother gave her.”

“Aaahh! Grand Ma-ma!” Elva cried.

“She what?” I asked, wanting to be sure I had heard him correctly.

“The dog ate her ring and she is terribly upset, as you can see!” Barney answered, glancing over at his wife. “If we don’t get that ring, I don’t know what will happen!” he added, nodding at her.

“Oh, my ring!” Elva wailed, clutching Princess to her chest and rocking back and forth.

“Did you think about taking Princess to a vet?” I asked, struggling for some plan here.

“Elva won’t have anything to do with that,” he answered, shaking his head and looking down at the floor. “She demanded that I bring her here and have the dog x-rayed. What could I do?” he asked, shrugging his shoulders, clearly helpless to disagree with his wife.

“Well, Mr. Wilson, we don’t routinely x-ray animals here in the ER,” I explained.

“Ooohhh! What will I do? Grand Ma-ma!”

So there we were—Elva was wailing, Princess was howling, and Barney continued to plead with me.

“You see, Doctor? What am I going to do?”

Then I did what any prudent ER doctor would do.

“Mr. Wilson,” I told him. “Try to calm your wife down, and I’ll be back in just a few minutes.”

I escaped into the hallway and quickly closed the door behind me. I could still hear Princess as I hurried back up the hall to the nurses’ station.

Jeff Ryan was standing there. He was the triage nurse this morning and had taken the Wilsons back to ENT.

He was writing on a chart and without looking up said, “Doc, there’s a depressed cat in room 2, a horse with bronchitis in 5, and a strung-out orangutan in Ms. Granger’s office.”

I wasn’t amused.

“What were you thinking?” I scolded him. “Why didn’t you send them to one of the vets in town?”

“You saw Elva,” he answered, teasing me. “Her nerves are ‘tore up.’ What was I supposed to do? She needs some help.”

“That’s for sure,” I agreed, shaking my head. “But what am I supposed to do? Send them around to X-ray for a ‘doggie view’?”

“How about a ‘small doggie view’?” Susan quipped, not looking up at us.

I glanced down at her and frowned.

“Well, Doc, we’ve x-rayed stranger things,” he said, stroking his chin knowingly.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“There was that guy a couple of years ago who was sure his two-year-old had swallowed his car key. He was stuck with no transportation and was desperate. We x-rayed the little guy then, remember?”

“I remember,” I said. “And right after we did, this father found the key in his back pocket. Now how does that relate to the Wilsons?”

“Well, remember when we had the Halloween candy scare and had all those parents bringing their kids’ candy in to be x-rayed? Somebody had heard on the news that people were putting razor blades in candy bars. How many bags of candy did we x-ray?”

For two or three Halloweens we’d had people lined out the door, waiting to have their children’s candy x-rayed. The hospital even had to call in extra staff. Finally they refused to do it anymore, and it stopped.

“You’re right. I do remember that,” I said, beginning to wonder if there might be some precedent for x-raying Princess. After all, it didn’t seem we were going to be able to help Elva until we determined whether or not that ring was in her dog’s gut.

“And I seem to remember that
someone
on duty that night managed to confiscate a fair amount of Milk Duds,” Jeff said, cutting his eyes at me accusingly.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” I said innocently. Milk Duds were my favorite candy…it was all coming back to me now.

“And what about Jeremy Fowler?” he asked, again nodding his head.

“Jeremy Fowler.” I said the name slowly, unable to keep from smiling.

Halloween, 1986. 9:45 p.m.
The back hallway was lined with ghoulies and ghosties and all manner of strange and frightening creatures. Scattered amongst them were a few princesses and pirates, and at least a half dozen Elvis Presleys. They were all impatiently waiting to have their candy x-rayed so they could go home and begin devouring the sugar-laden treats. At one point, I glanced back there and saw an Elvis sneak some bubble gum out of his bag and into his mouth.

As I stepped out of room 5, having examined a patient with a non-Halloween case of possible appendicitis, I almost ran into Jeff Ryan and the man he was leading back to minor trauma. Actually it was a scarecrow, or a very good imitation of one. It was a middle-aged man, looking for all the world like Ray Bolger in
The Wizard of Oz
. Only
this
scarecrow was gingerly holding a bloody rag to his forehead. He managed a smile as he passed me in the hallway.

Jeff had glanced over and grinned at me, nodding his head. When he came back up to the nurses’ station a few minutes later, he put the chart of minor trauma B down and said, “Where’s Dorothy when you need her? This scarecrow really
does
need a brain.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, intrigued by what I had seen and now just heard.

“Just wait,” Jeff replied cryptically. “You know who that is, don’t you?”

“Sure,” I said, not looking over at him. “A scarecrow.”

“No, I mean who that guy
really
is.”

“I couldn’t tell,” I answered truthfully. “Am I supposed to know him?”

“That’s Jeremy Fowler, chairman of the county council,” Jeff explained. “You’ll recognize him when you get a good look.”

I slid the chart of room 5 over to the secretary.

“We’ll need a CBC and a urine,” I told her. “And don’t let him eat or drink anything.”

Then I picked up Fowler’s chart.
46 yr old M—laceration of forehead.

“Come on,” I said to Jeff. “What’s going on here?”

“Just wait,” he repeated. “He’ll tell you.”

Then he disappeared back into the triage room.

I had met Jeremy Fowler on a couple of occasions, and I remembered him as being a nice guy. He had been on the county council when we moved to Rock Hill, and now was the chairman. I wondered how he had lacerated his forehead, and on Halloween.

There were two other patients in minor trauma, both resting quietly and hidden from view behind their drawn curtains. I walked over to bed B, pulled its curtain aside, and stepped over to the stretcher.

“Jeremy,” I greeted him. “I’m Robert Lesslie. What happened to you tonight?”

“I’m glad you’re on duty tonight, Robert,” he said, extending his hand to me. His handshake was firm and strong, and he said, “It seems that I’ve had a little…mishap.”

He took the kitchen rag from his forehead, exposing a three-inch laceration that extended from his hairline down to just above the bridge of his nose.

“Wow,” I said softly. “That’s a pretty good cut. How did it happen?” I moved closer to him, gently examining the gaping wound and looking for any other signs of trauma.

“Well, I feel sort of foolish…” He stopped and peered around the edges of the curtain, as if making sure no one else could hear him. Then in a hushed voice he told me his story.

“I decided, since it’s Halloween and all, that I would do something different this year. We have a lot of kids in our neighborhood and I thought it might be fun if I put a little fear of the Lord in ’em. I dressed up as a scarecrow—wait, you can see that. Looks pretty good, doesn’t it?”

He held his arms out and cocked his head to one side. Actually, he had done a great job. There was straw stuffing coming out of the collar of his shirt and his sleeves. And his overalls were loose and well-worn.

“Good job!” I congratulated him, smiling.

“My wife helped me with most of this,” he said, looking down at his garb. “She didn’t like the idea of what I was going to do, but she helped anyway. She’s out in the waiting room and is pretty upset with me.”

He glanced around the room again and resumed in a hushed voice.

“Anyway, I got some bales of hay and put them on the porch by the front door, and got a couple of pumpkins and scattered them around. Then I sat down on one of the bales, leaned back, and got real still. I didn’t move a muscle. And pretty soon, the kids starting coming up the walkway. I could hear them whispering, and I’d peek a little and see them pointing at me. But I wouldn’t move at all, not until they got right up to the door. And then when they’d ring the doorbell, I’d jump up and holler and wave my arms in the air! And those kids would take off running—screaming and hollering and not looking back. I felt kind of bad—one of the kids’ candy bags flew up in the air and landed in the bushes. I hope they’ve gone back to get it,” he added, shaking his head a little.

He was about to go on, when we heard some giggling from the bed next to us. Someone was listening and enjoying this story.

Jeremy looked up and motioned for me to move closer. Then in barely a whisper, he continued.

“That went on for about an hour, and every single trick-or-treater got the willies scared out of them. Every single one. It was great! And I was having a blast.”

He paused and his brow, bloodied as it was, furrowed a little.

“Then the little redheaded Bates boy came up the steps. He’s about eight, and he was all by himself, dressed up like one of those Star Wars characters. Just like all the other times, I waited and didn’t move a muscle. He was more cautious than any of the others, and was studying me pretty hard. Never took his eyes off me, and kept a good distance, circling around the porch until he could reach the doorbell. When he rang it, I jumped up and hollered and started waving my arms and all. He took a few steps and then saw the pitchfork I had leaned against one of the bales of hay. That kid’s strong for his age, and quick. He dropped his bag of candy, grabbed the pitchfork, and whacked me on the forehead! Knocked me down! Then he grabbed his candy and took off. Never looked back, just kept running.”

Jeremy gently dabbed away the small trickle of blood running down his nose.

“Can’t blame the boy,” he said, smiling a little. “I probably would have done the same thing. Anyway, that’s the story, and here I am.”

After I finished examining him, we sent the scarecrow around to radiology with the order—
Skull films—whacked by Darth Vader
.

It took a while, but I was able to put our scarecrow back together. I couldn’t help him with a new brain, though. He would just have to learn to use the one he had.

I was still thinking about Jeremy Fowler and must have been smiling when Susan repeated herself. “Dr. Lesslie!”

This time she was louder, and she snapped her fingers, trying to get me to refocus.

“Whatever you’re thinking about, I don’t know if I want to hear it,” she told me. “But what are you goin’ to do with the woman in ENT?”

I glanced down again at Elva Wilson’s chart and made up my mind. Sometimes you just don’t need to go by the book. I looked back up at Jeff and said, “We’re going to x-ray that pooch.”