Angels on the Night Shift

by Robert D. Lesslie, M. D.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  As he began, the two nurses quietly talked to each other as they gingerly but rapidly undressed Jenny. Clara used the intercom to call for lab and X-ray, and Patsy prepared to start two IVs. All the while, they spoke soothingly to the little girl, and when they could, stroked her tangled and bloody hair, trying to calm and reassure her. She just lay there, strangely quiet, staring up at the ceiling.

  “We got a call for a dog bite,” Denton said, stepping back from the stretcher and lowering his voice. “Down on Elm Street, about five minutes from here. When we got to the scene, there was a big ruckus out in the front yard, with maybe twenty or thirty people standin’ there and hollerin’. We had to push our way through the crowd, trying to find this little girl,” he paused, motioning with his head to the stretcher.

  Then his face clouded. “It seemed liked no one was worried about Jenny—they were all watchin’ two guys fightin’ over by this dog pen between these two houses. It was absolute chaos! You know Junior Starr?” he suddenly asked me.

  “The guy with all the tattoos on his arms and face?” I responded.

  “Yeah, that’s Junior,” Denton nodded. “He was right in the middle of it with a big hawkbill knife, swingin’ it at this other guy, swearin’ and sayin’ he was gonna kill him.”

  “Where was Jenny?” I interrupted.

  “Like I said, Doc, everybody was watchin’ this fight and we had to look around for the ‘dog bite.’ We saw this woman kneelin’ on the ground by the front porch and lookin’ down at something. I ran over there and found…It was Jenny’s mother, and she was holdin’ Jenny in her arms and screamin’. We hadn’t been able to hear her with all the other stuff goin’ on.”

  He stopped and looked down at his bloody hands.

  “I called Joey over and we got started. She was breathin’ and had a good pulse, and she seemed alert. But the whole time, she never made a whimper—she just was lying there, staring up at the sky. I gotta tell ya that it scared me. We both tried to get a line started but couldn’t. That’s when we called it in and headed to the truck.”

  He took a deep breath and turned his head to the trauma room door.

  “Those guys out in triage, one of them must be Junior Starr,” he muttered. “While we were workin’ on Jenny we heard someone yell, ‘He’s been stabbed!’ and people started runnin’ everywhere. That’s about the time the police came down Elm Street with their sirens blarin’. Joey was goin’ over to check on those guys but they had already disappeared. I don’t know how they did it, but it looks like they beat us here!”

  “Who is ‘they’?” I asked.

  “Junior Starr,” he answered. “He owns the pit bull, the one that got loose.”

  “Pit bull?” I exclaimed, now understanding the damage done to the little girl.

  “Yeah, he has a pit bull—Jupiter, they call him. He apparently got loose this evening and went over to Jenny’s yard. She was out playin’ and didn’t see it comin’. No warning or anything. That dog just attacked her and did this…” He again motioned toward the stretcher.

  “When her daddy—Toby Ragin—heard the noise, he came out of the house and picked up a shovel and went after the dog. That’s when Junior came over, lookin’ for Jupiter, and the two got into it. Toby must be out in the waiting room too. He’s probably the one who got stabbed.”

  I had heard enough and stepped over beside the stretcher.

  Two lab techs had drawn blood and were hurrying out the door, whispering to each other, while our X-ray tech was preparing to shoot some portable films. Patsy and Clara had done what they could to clean up Jenny, but nothing could lessen the devastation of what I now saw.

  She was lying calmly on her back with her arms at her sides. The deep bite on her right forearm was covered with saline-soaked gauze. There were a dozen or so scattered bite marks on her left arm and hand, and on her right thigh.

  But it was her face that grabbed my eyes and wouldn’t release them.

  Her right upper eyelid was ripped from the brow through her lashes, and it flopped aimlessly every time she blinked. There was another gash that started in her right nostril and extended down through her upper lip, gaping open and exposing her upper baby teeth.

  Jupiter, the pit bull, had meant business. At her jawline, just above her jugular blood vessels, were two deep bites, the lower one exposing the bone of her mandible.

  I was hoping that the left side of her face had escaped this terrible damage, but as I gently moved her head to the right, I saw her ear. The top part was missing, and the lobe had been shredded. It was covered in clotted blood and dangling loosely.

  Patsy took a deep breath behind me, looking down over my shoulder. “Do you want me to cover as much as I can with wet gauze?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, shaking my head. “And we’ll need to get in touch with whoever’s on for plastic surgery.” Then I turned to her and whispered, “I just hope they can put her back together.”

  She turned to the counter and opened a cabinet, reaching for more sterile four-by-fours. The trauma door opened and a policeman walked in. He stepped over to where I stood and looked down at Jenny Ragin.

  His hand flew to his mouth and he recoiled, a look of horror and disbelief on his face. “What in the…” he gasped, reaching out for the wall behind him.

  Clara immediately helped the young officer to a stool and he sat down.

  “Doc, I had no idea…” he mumbled. “I knew it was a dog bite, but…”

  “It’s bad, Jimmy,” I said, recognizing him from other late-night visits to the ER. “But she’s going to live.”

  There was loud shouting in the hallway, just on the other side of the door.

  “Where’s my daughter?” a man screamed. “Where’s Jenny?”

  I quickly looked over to the stretcher, knowing the little girl must have heard this outburst. She didn’t move a muscle, just kept staring up at the ceiling. Clara was rubbing her head while Patsy began dressing the wounds on her face.

  Jimmy jumped up and headed for the door.

  “Doc, you’re going to be busy the rest of the night,” he told me. “Her father and Junior Starr got in a real fight, and they’re both messed up pretty good. We’ll have a couple of guys here to keep things under control. And you won’t be seeing the mother. She’s already on her way to jail—busted one of the firemen who responded to the call.”

  He disappeared out into the hallway just as we heard another voice, more distant, yelling, “I’m gonna kill him! He killed my dog!”

  The door closed and I looked over at Patsy Wilson. She looked up at me, and her jaw was set firmly in anger. She shook her head slowly and then looked back down at Jenny.

  Clara continued to stroke the little girl’s head, and I thought I could hear her quietly singing. There was a troubled look on her face and her lip trembled.

  The door opened again, and Clay Norcutt, the plastic surgeon on call, walked into the room.

  Two hours later, I had repaired the lacerations on Toby Ragin’s right forearm and released him from the department. He was on his way over to the surgical waiting room with a police escort, having been charged with multiple offenses. Because Jenny was down the hall in the OR, the officers were going to give him the chance to wait there and learn of her progress. It would be several hours before he heard anything.

  Junior Starr was on his way to jail. He had a fractured rib, a direct result of Toby’s shovel being applied to his chest, but no serious injuries. We were all glad to see him leave.

  I looked up at the clock—it was 5:15. Almost two more hours to go, and we were exhausted.

  Susan Everett was sitting behind the counter while Patsy and I leaned heavily against it, making some notes on the charts in front of us.

  “Where’s Clara?” I asked, looking around the area. She was nowhere to be seen.

  “I don’t know,” Patsy said, looking up from Junior Starr’s ER record. “I haven’t seen her in the
past half hour or so.”

  Susan waved her hand to get our attention, and without saying a word pointed over her shoulder to the observation room.

  “I’ll go check on her,” Patsy said quietly, pushing the chart away from her. “This can wait.”

  She walked over to the door of OBS, looked around for a second, and then disappeared from view.

  “What’s going on?” I asked Susan.

  “Don’t know,” she answered, not looking up from her work. “I saw her go in there about forty-five minutes ago, but she didn’t say anything to me. Looked upset though, and she hasn’t come out.”

  I looked over at the entrance to OBS and wondered what was going on. My better judgment told me to stay where I was.

  Half an hour later, Clara walked out of the room and past the nurses’ station. I was sitting there with Susan, and the young nurse briefly glanced over at me. Her eyes were red and she tried to muster a smile before disappearing down the hallway.

  Patsy Wilson came out of OBS and walked over to where we sat. She took a deep breath and pulled over a chair. As if knowing Patsy and I needed to talk, Susan stood up and said, “I’m going back to the lounge for some coffee. Either of you need anything?”

  “I’m fine,” I told her.

  “Nothing here,” Patsy said.

  And then we were alone.

  “Well,” I said slowly. “What was that all about? Is Clara okay?”

  “She’s going to be okay,” Patsy said with a tone of both concern and resolve. “Clara’s not as tough and hardened as we are. She apparently has seen a lot of difficult stuff recently, and her emotions have been building up. They have a way of doing that down here, you know.”

  She glanced over at me and I silently nodded in agreement.

  “And then all this tonight with Jenny—that was just too much for her to handle. What she needs is to be able to talk with someone who’s been there.”

  Her face clouded over and she didn’t say anything. Then she took a deep breath and looked up at me.

  “She really likes it here, and she really likes the staff—even you,” she poked at me. “But you know, we all need someone to lean on from time to time—a sort of mentor, I suppose.”

  “You mean like Virginia was for you?” I said, smiling at her.

  “Like Virginia has been for a lot of nurses.” She nodded her head. “And for a few hardheaded doctors,” she added, raising her eyebrows and looking squarely at me.

  “Clara’s going to make a great ER nurse,” Patsy continued, her tone leaving no room for doubt. “And you’re not going to lose her. I’m going to talk with Virginia and see if someone, maybe Lori Davidson, can take her under their wing for a while. I think that’s all she’s going to need. It’s just that we all have our breaking points. There will come a time when…when we…”

  She couldn’t go on and turned her face from me. I thought I knew what she was thinking—about her own breaking point that day in the ER. And I gave her some time.

  We both sat in silence, until finally I asked, “What about you, Patsy?”

  She looked over at me with a puzzled expression on her face that gradually changed to one of uncomfortable understanding.

  “Me?” It really wasn’t a question, but a sigh of resignation.

  She knew what I was talking about, and there was a growing sense of release in her eyes and voice as she began telling me why she had left the ER seven years ago.

  “Stu Lowry and I were close friends. Looking back on it, I can understand how that might have seemed…how you might have wondered what the big deal was when I left the ER. After all, everybody liked Dr. Lowry. I know the two of you were friends.”

  “Yeah, I still miss him,” I told her. “Virginia told me you were friends all through school.”

  “Virginia doesn’t know the whole story.”

  Patsy took a deep breath and leaned back in her chair.

  “Stu and I were more than friends in school. We were childhood sweethearts, all the way through college. We were like one person, and we both always took it for granted that we would one day be married. Then Stu applied and was accepted into medical school. His family was really excited about that, but they didn’t have the money to help him. He scraped together some small scholarships to make it through the first year. But it was really going to be tight for him, and we both knew it just was the wrong time for us to be getting married. But neither of us would bring it up.”

  She paused and looked away. When she next spoke, her voice was quiet, almost mournful.

  “And then I was pregnant.”

  She looked into my eyes again, and I just listened.

  “I didn’t tell Stu. I didn’t tell anyone. I was afraid that if he found out, he would insist on getting married right then and…That’s what I wanted, but I knew it wasn’t right for him. And I started pushing him away.

  “That was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life, Dr. Lesslie. And when I look back on it…I know now it was a mistake—a terrible mistake. But that’s what I did. Of course he didn’t understand. He kept coming to see me and calling and…But I knew what I had to do. Stu was not just smart—there was something special about him. And I knew he would someday be a gifted doctor. I couldn’t get in the way of that.”

  She stopped for a moment, and there were tears in her eyes.

  “And then the phone calls stopped. A few weeks later, I lost the baby. He never knew. No one has ever known, not until tonight. But Stu was gone, and my life went on. I tried to make myself believe it had never happened, but that didn’t work. I just stayed away from our old friends and never went to any of our high-school reunions. The next time I saw Stu was when we were working here in this hospital. We were both married with children, and we were both happy. It was wonderful to see him then, but it was different, in a way I hadn’t expected. Nothing would ever change what we had had all those years ago. But I knew without a doubt that the Lord’s hand was in everything that had happened to us. And I absolutely knew I loved my husband and my children and where my life had taken me.

  “But that morning when Stu came into the ER and was…Everything seemed to come down on me at once and I needed to get out of here. Now, looking back, I realize I had never really dealt with the heartbreak and pain, and the terrible loss. So I left the ER. I ran away.”

  She stopped and was silent.

  “Did it help?” I asked her quietly. “Leaving the ER?”

  “No, leaving the ER didn’t,” she sighed. “But I took the time to work on things, to face all that had happened. That part helped. But I’ve missed this place, and I’ve missed you guys. The ER is where I belong.”

  Now I understood why Patsy had left. I was humbled and moved that she would share all of this with me. And I knew that the Lord’s hand was still at work here. My voice cracked a little as I said, “Patsy, I think we both know who Clara’s mentor should be.”

  She must have heard the emotion in my voice because she quickly looked over at me, searching my face.

  “Well, it’s five ’til seven,” Susan announced, walking up to the counter. “Looks like we’re gonna make another twelve-hour shift.”

  I looked at Patsy, smiled, and stood up.

  “You’re right, Susan,” I told her. “We did.”

  By the end of that long night, we had an innocent little girl in the operating room, two belligerent men and a woman under police arrest, the fortunate save of a young nurse—Clara Adams—and the return of a lost treasure—Patsy Wilson.

  16

  A Hard Lesson

  6:55 p.m. “Okay, Robert—I’m going to show you I learned my lesson.”

  It was Liz Kennick, and she had just stepped out of room 5. She was excited about something and motioned for me to follow her to the other side of the nurses’ station.

  I was her relief tonight and had just walked into the department. The place was busy, with people and charts everywhere.

  “Come on over here,” she said i
mpatiently. “I need to show you something.”

  With the clipboard of room 5 in her hand, she walked around the nurses’ station to the X-ray view box. I followed, wondering what was going on.

  There was an X-ray folder lying on the small table below the box, but no films were hanging. Liz put her hand on the folder, apparently making sure I wouldn’t pick it up and open it.

  “Now, what was the lesson you taught me the other day?” she asked. “The one you said was so important for every ER doc?”

  “Hmm,” stroking my chin and feigning intense concentration. “‘Don’t spit in the wind!’ No, wait a minute. It was ‘Don’t let ’em see you sweat!’ That was it.”

  “Oh, come on!” she exclaimed, a look of exasperation on her face. “You know what I’m talking about. ‘Don’t make assumptions!’ That’s what you told me.”

  “Did I say that?” I replied with a puzzled look.

  She didn’t pay any attention and handed me room 5’s chart.

  “Take a look at that.”

  It was the record of a three-year-old boy with a chief complaint of “abdominal pain.” Quickly scanning the chart, I noted that his heart rate was fast at 120 and his temperature was 103.

  “Wow, looks like this little chap might be sick,” I said, giving her back the clipboard. “What’s he got?”

  “Well, this is very interesting,” she began, her face animated and her voice energized. “About an hour ago, the mother of the boy in room 5—his name is Chip Flanders—told me they had been down at the beach visiting some relatives. Chip had gotten hold of a magnet and swallowed it. Of course they all panicked and went to an ER down there. They had X-rays made,” she paused briefly, patting her hand on the radiology folder, “and the ER doctor told her Chip would be fine. The magnet was not too big and was rounded on both ends. It had passed through his stomach and was in the small intestine. He said it should move on through in a few days and not cause any problems. Since they were going to be home in a day or so, the doctor there told them to follow up with their pediatrician here in Rock Hill.”