2. Adventures in the ER
2
Adventures in the ER
“You know that feeling when you meet someone and your heart skips a beat? Yeah, that’s arrhythmia. You can die from that.”
-Unknown
Natalie Parker
“You are never going to believe this one,” McKenna, my favorite EMT, said as she walked out of the ER room she’d just dropped a patient off at.
I didn’t look up from the computer I was busy charting my latest nursing assessment on. “Let me guess... butt stuff?”
“Well, obviously,” McKenna replied, leaning against the nurses’ station counter. She swiped one of the pens and stuck it in her cargo pants pockets. “But you’re never going to guess what.”
I looked up to see her grinning devilishly at me.
“Um... a light-bulb?” I asked.
“That was last week,” she replied, waving her hand. “This one is better.”
“Gardening tool? Egg? Vegetable? Sausage?” I asked, getting a head shake no at each.
“Have you eaten yet?” McKenna asked. “Because it sounds like you’re prepping an omelet.”
I rolled my eyes at her. I hadn’t eaten, but that’s why nurses lived on coffee. Coffee counted as a food, right?
“Toothbrush? Phone? Wooden object?” I offered, going through a mental list of all the things I’d seen up someone’s rectum in the ER before.
“Wooden object is far too generic to count as a guess, but it’s not that,” McKenna replied, stealing another pen like I wouldn’t notice.
“Hamster?” I asked, hoping that I wouldn’t have to call a veterinarian at midnight again. Working the night shift at the Omaha General Hospital made for some interesting late night specialty phone calls.
“Thank heaven, no.” McKenna shook her head. “No live animals this time. I’m still traumatized by the guy with the boa constrictor.”
We both shivered.
“I have no idea, but I’m sure he fell on it ‘accidentally’ and has no idea how this happened,” I said, clicking save on my charting.
“Actually, this time he admits it,” she replied, grinning at my surprise. “You’re never going to guess what it is.”
I thought for a moment.
“A dildo, but it doesn’t have the flared base so it got lost up there,” I offered.
“How’d you guess?” she asked, frowning and pulling back from the counter. “Did you cheat and look at the admitting info?”
“Nope. It’s just hard to pretend you ‘accidentally’ fell on a dildo. A carrot? That’s not believable but at least it’s possible. A dildo only has one purpose,” I explained. “No one accidentally falls on a dildo because no one keeps those out where people can fall on them.”
McKenna nodded, stealing another pen. “We see weird stuff.”
“Yup. Please put back three of the four pens you just stole,” I said, rising from the computer to go greet my new patient. “You can keep one, but I need some pens tonight too.”
“I only took three!” McKenna protested until I crossed my arms and waited for her to admit her guilt. “Fine, it was more. I just thought I was being sneakier.”
She plopped three pens back into the cup on the counter.
“You going to miss all this when you’re a fancy nurse practitioner?” she asked as I gathered my things.
“I’m staying in the ER,” I reminded her. “I love the craziness here. I just want to be able to write my own orders and help more people.”
“How much longer until school starts and you leave me to fend on my own?” McKenna asked with a dramatized pout.
“I will only be dropping one shift when school starts. It’s a work study program sponsored by the hospital,” I reminded her. “I just need more hours to qualify for the scholarship. Post graduate school isn’t cheap.”
I was so grateful my hospital offered this program. It was for full-time nurses who wanted to become nurse practitioners. They would pay for my schooling as long as I had enough hours at the hospital.
I started school in just a few weeks and needed every shift I had to complete the work requirements for the scholarship. Once school started, my available work hours would drop, so it wasn’t something I could make up later.
Becoming a nurse practitioner was a dream I’d had for a long time and I wasn’t going to let anything derail me from it.
“Well, I’ve got another call,” McKenna said, checking her work phone. “I’ll bring you back something else fun.”
“How kind of you,” I deadpanned.
“Oh, and two more things,” McKenna said, walking away from me and back to her ambulance. “I actually took five pens. And the dildo is the vibrating kind. Have fun!”
I shook my head as she waltzed out the ER doors with her pilfered pens.
The ER was a wild place.
“Are you nurse Natalie Parker?” A uniformed police officer stood on the other side of the nurses’ station desk, looking annoyed.
“That’s me,” I replied, keeping my eyes on the screen. I had to finish my charting so I could get out of here and go home. My shift had technically ended ten minutes ago, but that meant nothing when the charting wasn’t done. It had been a crazy night, but as a nurse, I had to document all of it even if that meant staying late. Once I had this chart done, I could go home. If I concentrated, I could have the charting done in seven minutes.
Yes, I was counting the minutes. Night shift in the ER in a big city is not an easy thing. I’d been running all night. I’d snarfed a granola bar as the only form of dinner I could smash down my throat in the two minutes I’d managed to get away from patient’s emergencies. We’d had nonstop emergencies all night and I was hungry and tired. Coffee, as amazing a chemical as it was, could only go so far.
“I’m Officer Brown. Do you remember your patient, Hazel Smith, tonight?” Officer Brown asked.
I sighed. With him interrupting me, this charting was going to take even longer. At least ten minutes now.
“Was it the baby or the grandma?” I asked, trying to place the name. “Or the raccoon?”
“Definitely not the raccoon. You don’t remember Hazel?” He sounded surprised.
“Sir, I have seen twenty-three patients tonight,” I replied, looking at my very cluttered notes and doing a quick count. “Between CPR, an incident with a raccoon, a surprise baby, pneumonia, a bottle in a very strange and uncomfortable place, and an incident with an eyeball, I am lucky I remember my own name at this point.”
The officer paled slightly. “An eyeball?”
“I don’t think it was Hazel’s eyeball,” I replied. That patient had been a fifty-three-year-old male. McKenna had brought him to me after dildo guy.
Officer Brown shook himself as if trying to restart his mind. “No, Hazel is a three-week-old baby.”
I paused for a moment, going through the night’s patients.
“Right. Dehydrated. We sent her up to the Pediatric floor. Did something happen? Is she okay?”
That had been one of the more simple cases of the night. Baby Hazel’s mom had brought her in. Mom hadn’t wanted to go up to the unit, but due to Hazel’s age, she needed more medical attention than a trip to the ER could give her.
“Hazel is fine. However, the woman that brought her in wasn’t her mother,” the officer replied. “Did you notice anything strange?”
“That wasn’t her mother?” I stared at him. The woman had been incredibly attentive to the baby. Even McKenna had remarked about how concerned the mother had been for the child.
“No. The woman was a stranger. The real mother reported Hazel missing two days ago.” He frowned. “Are you sure you didn’t notice anything strange about her?”
“Well, strange is relative in the ER,” I explained. “But it did seem odd that she didn’t want to go upstairs to the Peds unit. She seemed very nervous and jumpy, but I just assumed it was because her baby was sick and a hospital stay is expensive.”
“And you didn’t notice that the child wasn’t hers?”
“No, I mean it was a little weird that she didn’t have a diaper bag with her. There wasn’t a car seat with her either, but some parents leave it in the car.” A sinking feeling started to grow in my stomach the more I talked. “She seemed unsure if Hazel was breast fed or took formula...”
“And how did the baby act around the mother?”
“The way a sick three-week-old baby acts around everyone?” I shrugged, knowing this night wasn’t going to get better. “Although, thinking back, the mom held her like she might break. I just assumed she was a first-time mom. That also explained why she was so unsure about how to feed her child. Parents get so overwhelmed by their sick or injured child that they forget all kinds of things.”
Now that I was thinking about it, I could see all sorts of red flags. No diapers, no diaper bag, no extra clothing, no socks, and just a soft fleece blanket that looked too big for a baby.
“I didn’t see it. I just saw a sick baby. I didn’t realize the baby was so dehydrated because she’d been kidnapped and the kidnapper didn’t know how to feed her.”
I felt like an idiot. Like I had failed this child.
This was the part of the job I hated the most. When I found out I didn’t do my best. When I didn’t help someone who could have used my help. I hadn’t done everything I could to help this kid.
Officer Brown gave me a kind smile. “You aren’t in trouble,” he told me. “It’s easy to miss child trafficking, especially with little kids that can’t talk or show you they aren’t with the right person.”
I nodded, my stomach still plummeting through the floor.
“What should I look for next time?” I asked. I hated that I knew there would probably be a next time. The downside to working in the ER was that I saw the worst of what people did to one another.
“You said a lot of the warning signs- no bottles or baby supplies. Looking uncomfortable holding a child, not having things prepared, and of course acting anxious or like they don’t know what they are doing.”
I nodded.
“I’m sure you’ll see it next time,” Officer Brown assured me. “The baby is safe upstairs with her real mother. We’re still looking for the woman that brought the baby in. There is a chance she could try and kidnap the child again.”
“I’m not going to let it happen again,” I promised him. “Now that I know what to look for, I’m going to make sure no one is stealing babies around me.”
“That’s all I can ask for,” Brown replied. He handed me a card with his name on it. “If you think of anything else, let me know.”
I pocketed his card, feeling the sudden heavy weight of it in my pocket. I was a good nurse. I loved my job in the ER. I loved helping people and the adrenaline of emergency care, but sometimes I hated how dark this place could be. Sometimes I hated seeing what humanity could do to one another. Who would steal a baby from their mother?
I sighed and looked back at the computer screen, trying to remember what it was I had been charting. I needed to get home and go to bed. Luckily, I had more done than I thought I did. I finished as quickly as I could, clocked out and hurried home.
The sun was bright and promising a beautiful day for me to sleep through. I felt like a vampire, creeping back into my lair before the sun could turn me to dust. I laughed. I handled a lot of blood at the hospital. I probably was part vampire and just didn’t know it yet.
I paused for a moment at the entrance to my apartment building. I loved this place. The building was ten stories with the ground floor an open area for residents. We had a pool on the third floor, a state of the art gym, and a fantastic front desk staff.
Due to the prime location and the amazing view of downtown Omaha, several high profile people lived here. We had an NFL player, a famous author, and lots of high profile doctors and lawyers. I didn’t see any of them, even though the NFL player lived on my floor. Working nights meant I didn’t see much of anyone.
To be honest, the rent here should have been out of my price range, but my aunt owned the building. She gave me a very good deal on the smallest apartment in the building in return for watching her plants up on the rooftop garden once in a while.
I waved hello to the front desk as I came inside. The front lobby smelled like fresh coffee, but I didn’t want to be up all morning, so I walked past it without stopping and to the main elevator. Everyone was on their way out, so I had the elevator to myself for the ride up. I was already imagining how comfortable my pillow was going to be after a nice bowl of oatmeal.
The elevator doors opened and I stepped out onto my hallway, ready for my day to be over.
But apparently it was just beginning, because as I stepped out of the elevator, a goat ran down the hall right at me.