Friday, November 20, 2009

Action Heroes

The ER staff and I are standing in the empty trauma room, nothing to do but make restless bad jokes until the patients arrive.  The EMS radio only said it was a house fire, one adult female and two minors.  The ambulances are three minutes out.

We’re ready.  Oh man, are we ready.  We’ve got a half million dollars worth of technology in this room stocked like an arsenal with medical supplies: Allegiance gauze pads, Kimberly–Clark face masks, NovaPlus powder-free exam gloves, an Agilent EKG monitor, a Newport HT 50 ventilator and the main attraction, sitting on a shelf like a smug Napoleon, the Philips Heartstart XL defibrillator, green light on, fully charged.

I used to think all this medical weaponry was cool.  But it’s not the hardware that heals.  It’s the people.  Real action heroes waiting to use their superpowers.  We’ve got radiology, lab and respiratory technicians, staff nurses, anesthesiologist, two ER physicians and on standby the trauma rock stars: orthopedic, neuro and cardiothoracic surgeons.  During routine shifts the staff bicker with each other, complain about their exes and wade through the uninsured earaches and foul-mouthed drunks.  Until a critical patient hits the door.  Then they snap into high form: professional, efficient, calling orders, clamping arteries.  They can handle anything.

Except one thing.

Which is why I’m here.  The hospital chaplain.  Amidst all this weaponry I seem about as out of place as a Mennonite on a military base.

Bam two EMTs roll the first gurney through the doors and it’s a young woman strapped down, her face black with soot, coughing and yelling through her O2 mask, “Where’s my kids, where’s my kids?” Then boom two firefighters clomp in pushing a boy in Sponge Bob pajamas coughing and crying so hard the veins on his neck stand out.  They all reek of wood smoke.  The mom and the boy, hollering like that, will be ok.  But then the third victim arrives, a little girl flat on a gurney with an EMT squeezing a ventilator bag above her face.  The girl’s not moving, her skin is the wrong color, and as they veer into the third trauma room her limp arm swings off the cart and thumps the door frame.  I walk toward her room but a nurse jerks the curtain shut in my face.  Ten long minutes pass.  Finally, the physician inside looks up from the useless defibrillator to the clock, “How long now?” he asks.  Somebody says 45 minutes since the house.  “All right,” he says.  “We’ll call this one.” And that’s it.

Then we all hear it.  The girls’s mom two rooms down, her voice rising from a loud question to a spine-tingling cry.  “Is Nicky all right?” she demands.  “Where is she, what room is she in?  No, I will not lie back down!  Where is my daughter?

As I glide over to the curtained doorway of the mom’s room the exhausted action heroes all look over at me.  I don’t want to go in there.  But all of a sudden, I’m the only one who can go in there.  The firefighter at the door, this huge guy in red suspenders over a sweat-stained blue shirt, has a tear in his eye.  I couldn’t do your job, he whispers, and he pulls back the curtain for me.

And here I go.  No gear, no helmet, into the fire.

Broadcast by Jeff Nixa on November 20, 2009 • WVPE's Audio Archive
Community • Customs & Rituals • Health • Work • Permalink • Printer Friendly
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