Chapter Six
Sommer
Tonight had been a madhouse, and Sommer enjoyed the idea of blaming Abbie for conjuring the power of a full moon.
There were days and nights when the emergencies just kept coming, when there was no time to stop, hour after hour of concentrated physical and mental labor.
And invariably, on those nights, the moon was not just round but glowing brightly in the sky, without an obstructing veil of clouds.
Possibly that was an accurate observation, possibly it was happenstance. Sommer didn’t much care. It was part of the hospital lore.
Sommer had left some shifts so tired that when she got to her car, she was unable to drive herself home.
She’d learned to keep a survival pack in her back seat: a pillow and sleeping bag, a bottle of water and an MRE, a sleep mask, and gun-range noise-canceling headphones that didn’t exactly cut the ambulance sirens, but at least the scream didn’t jar her awake.
She’d park on the far side of the parking lot, lay the back seat down so she could lie flat, and pass out for as long as she needed to.
She credited her years of primitive camping for her ability to sleep in uncomfortable positions.
After particularly busy shifts, there were nights when Sommer’s brain wouldn’t shut off the adrenaline spigot, and she’d have to head home to play the video games that science said would soothe her mind. Blocks in rows—strategizing, stacking, clearing. Somehow it worked.
Tonight, Sommer thought the adrenaline-spigot scenario was possible, if not probable. It all depended on when Shoshana showed up.
“I need assistance!” a voice called from behind the curtain. It was professionalism masking panic.
Sommer pushed her cart against the wall and pulled the privacy curtain to the side to find an unconscious patient on the floor in what looked like a puddle of dried blood.
The nurse, crouching by his side, was checking his pulse as she turned her face toward Sommer.
“What’s happening?” Sommer moved swiftly into the room and flipped the patient’s hospital gown back down to cover his family jewels.
“He came in with rebound pain in his lower right abdomen, possible appendicitis.”
Sommer squatted beside the patient, putting her stethoscope to his chest. “He smells like he ran a hefty bar tab. It seems early for that.”
“The doctor asked for a toxicology panel along with his other labs. Once he sees the results, he’ll decide if he wants imaging or not.”
Sommer moved her stethoscope to his abdomen and listened for gurgling in his bowels and found none. Maybe it was appendicitis. “But you didn’t give him anything for his pain?”
“I didn’t. I was coming back to check on him and found him getting out of bed. He got tangled in his own limbs and hit the floor still conscious. He’s not responding now.”
The man was lying flat on his back with his arms and legs all in a nice, neat configuration. “He hit his head?”
“No. His head landed on his arm. I rolled him onto his back to check his vitals and be ready to call a code.”
“We have two codes running already. I’m not sure who would be left to show up.” Sommer’s attention moved to the dried blood on the floor. “Is this his blood?”
“Two patients ago had to have an arterial line put in, and the guy spurted. Environmental services are slammed. This was the only bed open. We had to use it.”
Sommer stood and went back to the hall to scan, and not seeing ready help, she went to the phone to call for the rapid response team that would get the patient safely in bed.
The hospital staff bustled up and down the halls, arms full of supplies, jogging behind carts stacked high. Everyone had that look on their face, as if they were aggressively handling a task.
There would be no help to be had for a while.
Sommer looked over at the new gal who stared back wide-eyed.
Sommer pulled the curtain back in place. “We can’t leave him lying in someone else’s blood. He’ll need a bath once he’s on the bed.” She stood over the scene, assessing. The man wasn’t tall, but he was unwieldy—more than three hundred pounds for sure.
At university, Sommer’s mentor had hammered home the importance of lifting heavy.
Not only could she do a better job of the chest compressions, but regular strenuous exercise would mitigate a lot of the wear and tear that hurt nurses' bodies.
Sommer could do a clean single deadlift of 250 pounds, and she could hold it there for a count of thirty. Was that enough in this situation?
She wasn’t going to lift him; the hospital liability would be through the roof. So that question was purely hypothetical.
“I’m Sommer. What’s your name?”
“Darlene.” She looked young, and though she held her body confidently, there was a glimmer of panic in her eyes.
Rightly so. This was going to be a bit of a trick.
Darlene was no willow branch. She had a country-gal feel, the kind of woman who had done farm chores or at least had to grapple large bags of dog food from her car into the house. Sommer looked her in the eye. “What we do in these circumstances is—”
“Our best,” Darlene said it like a kindergarten teacher encouraging her students. It was too wide-eyed and bushy-tailed of a response.
“Sure. That. I was thinking improvise. RRT is going to be a while. We need to stabilize his neck and roll him onto a backboard. That will at least move things along when the team gets here, and it will get him out of the biohazard and off the cold floor.”
“Oh,” Darlene stood up. “I’ll go get what we need from the trauma closet. You can stay?”
She didn’t wait for an answer and took off in a rush.
“Hi,” Sommer said to the unconscious man. “Sorry for your troubles.”
Sommer remembered a technique she’d seen the occupational therapists practice in their dorm room and tried to imagine whether it would work here.
She wondered if, in an extreme emergency with no help to be had, she could remember how to do it.
The student had grabbed the top sheet from the bed and shook it out.
“And lay it like this.” She’d placed it so the length went across the bed and draped down near the patient.
“Then, just like we’re changing a sheet, we roll him onto his side, tuck the sheet under him, and we roll him back the other way. ”
Sommer had been dubious as she watched. The person who had volunteered as their pretend patient was pretty big.
She looked down at the patient. Not this guy big, but close.
Her friend had been dubious but enthusiastic in attempting the maneuver. “Once he’s on the sheet, we push him up as close to the bed as we can, and then you climb onto the bed kneeling on the top sheet, using your weight to hold it in place.”
Her fellow student climbed up on the bed.
“I take the top end of the sheet, and I hand it to you.”
Seemed easy enough.
“Then, I climb up beside you. Now we’re both kneeling on the sheet. We hand-over-hand gather the sheet, and as we do that, the patient is in the fold of the sheet and moves up as we shorten the length of fabric. We aren’t taking on his whole weight because of the sheet.”
Sommer had crossed her arms over her chest. It was a ridiculous plan. “Are you just making this up in your head?” Sommer had asked. “I don’t think we’re ever supposed to do that.”
“No negativity or you’ll be asked to leave,” her friend said before turning back to her fellow student. “Once we have some part of his body on the bed, we just pull him on, then we adjust.”
The two students had been shoulder to shoulder, grasping the sheet.
“What if he’s dropping?” Sommer was fascinated. And their Guinea pig was brave as hell.
“No negativity,” her friend said sternly.
“It’s a good question,” the Guinea pig called out.
“If he’s dropping, we try to ease him down gently. It’s not that far, and we have control of his head.” She adjusted her hands on the sheet. “Okay, so here we go. On three. One. Two. Three.”
Sommer had grossly underestimated the effort that it would take.
The students’ faces were red with exertion.
“Keep going. Keep going. Gravity will make it harder the farther we move him off the ground. Eighteen inches. We can do it.” Their fingers wrapped stiffly in the cotton; Sommer could almost see the fibers stretching and straining.
“Closer. He’s getting closer.”
Sommer reached out her hands as if somehow, she could catch the guy before he hit the ground.
And then it was done!
Success.
Sommer would try it here.
But policy was policy.
Darlene was back, and Sommer took control of the spine board, while Darlene clasped the C-collar in place.
Between them, they rolled the patient to his side.
“Darlene, it looks like he’s lost bladder control and could use a chuck to catch that. We might as well get the underpad in place with the board.”
The two were positioning the board against the patient’s back so they could roll him into place when the curtain swished back.
Sommer’s body dynamics wouldn’t allow her to turn. “Whoever just showed up, we could use some help.”
Shoshana rounded into view. “Where do you want me?”
“I’ll stabilize his head,” Darlene panted. “Sommer needs help lowering him.”
Shoshana rounded to the man’s feet, grabbed the spine board, and with another countdown, the three women lowered the patient safely into place.
Sommer stood and covered him with a blanket.
“Good timing,” Shoshana said.
“Welcome to the Emergency Department set to the overflow cycle.” Sommer reached out to give Shoshana a hug. “Perfect timing. Thank you.”
Darlene had her hands on her knees. “Whew.”
“Is this one of mine?” Shoshana asked, looking from the patient to the puddle of dried blood rehydrating with the pool of urine.
“He’s Darlene’s.” Sommer caught the woman’s eye. “Do you have this, or do you need more help? I have patients waiting.”
“No, go,” Darlene waved a scoot hand her way. “Thank you!”
“Come on, Shoshana, let me run down the report.”
Shoshana pulled the privacy curtain closed behind her.
“Good evening with the family?” Sommer asked as Shoshana took control of the supply cart.
“Excellent, thank you. I put a slice of triple chocolate cake in your locker.”
“I’ve been looking forward to it all night.”
Very quickly, Shoshana was brought up to speed, and the handoff was made.
“Full moon,” Sommer called over her shoulder as her goodbye.
Now all Sommer needed to do was get herself home, get a thorough scrub in the shower, and fall into bed.
Wouldn’t that feel marvelous?