3 a.m. bedtime stories

I should be passed out by now. I've worked the last 3 nights in the ER so even though I'm tired...my body wants to stay awake. Just watched a movie...thinking it would help me fall asleep...nope. A car just pulled up outside at the neighbors. I guess I'm not the only one up.

Last night in the ER (around 3 a.m.) a girl came in after a "cat fight" at a restaurant. Her opponent had taken off her stiletto and hit our patient in the eye. She had a nice laceration across her eyelid. Fat was oozing out and her eye and cheek were swollen like a balloon. The X-rays showed a "blow-out" fracture, meaning the thin bony socket that holds the eyeball got cracked in several places. You can't really put a cast on that. We called ophthalmology to come suture up her lid. The resident that came was from Loma Linda. She did a really good job.

The night before that we had a half naked girl brought in by the police for assaulting his sergeant but that wasn't before they broke up the "cat fight" she was in. Her wound was a nice meaty bite mark on the back of her arm. Apparently biting is still allowed when you're an adult...or maybe just when you're drunk. That same night I sutured up a laceration on man's forehead. He had also been brought in by the police and not only was he intoxicated, he was very upset with the cop that arrested him for possession of cocaine and felt the need to verbalize this...over and over again. This certain policeman was a young and cocky fellow who preceded to purposely aggravate the man and for some reason had taken a liking to me and was asking me questions about myself as I prepared for my suturing procedure. With the patient hand-cuffed to both sides of the gurney, laying on his back, his line of sight was limited but the officer chose to stand directly over him across the bed from me. This made my job difficult as the drunken man kept turning his head to scold the officer and ramble on about injustice. The cop smugly ignored him as he continued to "interrogate" me. My tolerance level was declining as I thought, "this officer has just as much common sense as this drunk man." I took a plastic syringe of normal saline to irrigate the wound. My plan was to push the fluid gently into the laceration to clean it out but as I pushed on the end of the syringe...it wouldn't budge. I pushed harder...And like a shotgun going off, the saline shot into the wound and ricocheted out the other direction splattering blood all over the wall, the sheets and...the policeman's face. He looked at me in shock as his hand slowly wiped a few drops off his cheek and out of his eye. With a serious tone I said, "You should probably go have the doctor look at that." He walked out. I honestly felt bad for the mistake but with him gone my patient quieted down, fell asleep, and I sewed him up in peace.