It was shocking to see all of that blood. I know it was the ER but still some sights are hard to take and harder to forget. This man’s hair was matted with blood and one eye looked like it had been ripped from the socket. He had blood coming out of one ear and his clothing was covered.
Sometimes things are not nearly as serious as they appear, but I had a feeling that was not the case with this guy. For the sake of this story I will call him Jim.
As Jim's nurse and a couple of others rushed to his side, and Dr. S seemed unsure where to start (which never happens), I knew this would be a case I would remember forever. I noticed a beautiful lady near his bed who had fear covering her face. She seemed lost. I decided she was this patient’s girlfriend. I got her settled into a more private waiting room (we often called it the grief room); I notified the doctor where she was in case they needed to speak to her.
As I stepped into the the Emergency Room that night I could sense the tension in the room. Some shifts are like that. A lot of that has to do with which doctors are on duty and the rest of the staff as well. The patients that walk in or are rolled in, also play a big factor in the tension. All shifts have an ebb and flow about them so I knew that things would relax and then build again as the night progressed. This case was the center of our focus for quite a while.
Meanwhile, a large lady dressed in a big moo-moo type outfit was wheeled in by her daughter. She had fallen on the steps that led to her porch and twisted her ankle. It did look very swollen and some bruising was already visible. Once she was settled into her bed and the doctor saw her, she was whisked off to our radiology department for some X-rays. The daughter remained next to her bed in a small chair. Her eyes darted around the room in amazement. We had many patients at that time and most of them seemed to need attention. Once things slowed a bit, and while her mother was still in X-ray, this lady asked me what happened to the man with all the blood. She had been in the waiting room when he was wheeled in there. I explained that we can’t discuss our patients out of respect for privacy. She said she knows the girl who wheeled him in; they went to high school together. She added, “I doubt she would remember me, but she was a cheerleader and very popular so I remember her well, her name is Jessica, and that is her brother, Jim. He was always in trouble and had even gotten kicked out of school.”
I just gave an awkward smile and said, her mom would be back soon from X-ray. She grabbed my left wrist when I turned to walk away and said that someone in the waiting room, that came with them, said Jim had been seeing a married woman and the husband caught them and beat Jim up. He managed to get away and called his sister who picked him up. I wriggled my wrist free, smiled, said “thanks” and walked over to an elderly lady who was standing at the desk with a lost look on her face.
So, I made an assumption that she was his girlfriend, when in fact, she was a sister to our bloody, brooding patient. He had a couple of gashes in his head that had to be sewn up, they were so large that all of his hair had to be shaved to gain access to the wounds. He had a severe concussion. Two of his fingers were broken, along with 3 ribs. He had lots of bruising on his face and his upper lip was swollen so much that it distorted his face. Jim had to be admitted to the hospital and his sister remained at his side.
Much later in the shift, Dr. S said that Jim would only say he fell. Knowing that these injuries looked more like a beating, he was questioned further; but that was his story and he was sticking to it.
We all make bad decisions in this life, some worse than others. As I drove home that night, I thought of the sister who was so concerned and I figured that was probably not her first time to be worried about her brother. I thought of the brother and how his decisions had brought him so much pain. I thought of the wife that had been caught with him and wondered was she safe or maybe at another hospital or perhaps no longer alive. My mind was bouncing around in the mess that was caused by this man and the price he was paying along with the misery he had caused for others involved. I hope he healed well and learned his lesson. We all make mistakes but lessons should be learned to avoid the same pitfalls returning. I was happy he had survived, mostly for his sister’s sake, I could see the pain and frustration in her face.
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