is a seasoned nurse, writer, and executor for her family, who has managed crises from hospital wards to sibling trauma. I’m bent over a patient, starting an IV. I hear the steady beep of monitors, the constant hum, and then a scuffle and profanity.
The commotion lands on the other side of the curtain. I finish taping up the IV, excuse myself, and slip out. There, surrounded by paramedics, nurses and police, I find a yelling, kicking, spitting woman who smells of a long day of drinking.
I move quickly, dodging a surprisingly well-aimed kick by inches, and grab her shin with both hands, holding it to the bed. Staff members hold her other limbs while a coworker gets the leather restraints in place. I wanted to be in the big city.
I grew up in a smaller town where our experience was limited to what we saw on TV and read in newspapers. By the time I was a teenager, I had such a narrow worldview that barely anybody else belonged in it and an ego so loud that barely anyone else could be heard over it. I proudly spouted ‘personal responsibility’ to anyone complaining about whatever rut they’d become stuck in.
I carried that attitude with me to Chicago in the 1990s, when I began working in this ER. I watched the woman urinate on herself and then taunt us about having to clean it up. Meanwhile, my patient on the other side of the curtain waited for the asthma medications still in my pocket while another patient held pressure on a wound in the waiting room.
I huffed and looked at my paramedic colleague in disbelief. Frank had lived and worked in Chicago his whole life. Charlene’s mask had slipped off in the scuffle, and she used the opportunity to spit at me.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
