Miracles in the ER (16 page)

Miracle worker.

…the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

T
HE
Miracle
OF
A
NGELS

Angels descending bring from above

Echoes of mercy, whispers of love.

F
ANNY
C
ROSBY
(1820–1915), from the hymn “Blessed Assurance”

In His Care

It was a Sunday morning, and the after-church crowd was still a few hours from hitting the ER. We were quiet, with only a few patients scattered around the department.

Amy Connors logged in the next patient, slid the chart of minor trauma C across the countertop, looked up at me, and said, “Busted head, seventy-two-year-old. A little unusual for this time of day.”

“Amy, you know better than that. Not much around here is unusual.”

“Yeah, right. But still.”

She turned in her chair, picked up a stack of charts, and starting filing them in one of the desk drawers.

I picked up the chart and scanned the “patient information” section.

Roy Littlejohn. 72-year-old male. Lacerated scalp—alleged assault.

“Alleged assault.” Now that
was
a little unusual for this time of day.

The hallway was quiet as I made my way back to minor. I heard voices as I turned into the room—and came to an abrupt stop.

On the stretcher in the back-right corner sat an elderly man, clutching a blood-soaked kitchen towel and holding it to the back of his head. He looked up at me, raised his other hand, and smiled. Mr. Littlejohn.

But who were these other people?

There were no other patients on the three remaining beds, but the room was crowded. I recognized the police officer who was there, Jimmy Bagwell. He was standing at the head of the stretcher, making notes on a small notepad. He looked over at me and raised two fingers to the front of his hat. I nodded.

Jammed behind the stretcher were two young boys, probably ten or eleven years old. They stood tensely, their arms folded across their chests with hands in their armpits. They didn’t look up, and their eyes were glued on Mr. Littlejohn.

Sitting in a chair at the foot of the stretcher was an elderly woman. She wore a flowered housecoat, tattered at the edges, and her hair was covered with a purple scarf. One hand rested on the man’s knee.
This must be his wife.
She looked over at me and dabbed a reddened eye with a much-used Kleenex.

Lori Davidson stood with her back to me, opening a suture kit on the countertop. She should know better. Our rooms were small, and our policy was to have only one family member with a patient. Otherwise things got crowded and sometimes out of hand.

She turned and our eyes met. I tilted my head and furrowed my brow. She just smiled, shrugged her shoulders, picked up the suture tray, and carried it over to the metal stand beside the stretcher.

She must have a reason for this. She knew this was one of my pet peeves and—

“Doctor, this is Roy Littlejohn and his wife, Ella.” The metal cups clattered together as she set them on the stand. “And these are their…boys.”

I nodded at the couple and stepped over to the stretcher. The two boys never looked up.

“I’m Dr. Lesslie,” I said, smiling at Ella and shaking Roy’s hand. His grip was warm and strong. “Tell me what happened this morning.”

“We’re sorry to put you to this trouble, Doctor,” Roy answered. “I know you’re busy, and—”

“Three guys broke into their house this morning, Doc,” Jimmy Bagwell interrupted. “Tried to rob them, and busted Roy over the back of his head with a baseball bat.” Jimmy’s face was flushed, and he spat out the words angrily. I looked at him and then over at Lori. She shook her head and turned away.

“We’ve got ’em downtown, and I came with Roy and Ella to make sure they were okay.”

Roy looked up at the officer. “Thanks, Jimmy. But they didn’t get anything, just a cell phone that doesn’t work and five dollars off the kitchen table.”

Ella shook her head and patted her husband’s knee.

“Tell me exactly what happened,” I said, stepping closer to the man. “Did you lose consciousness? And are you hurt anywhere other than your head?”

Roy told me about the assault, how the three young men had knocked
on the door asking for help, then grabbed his arms and pushed him into the kitchen.

“There was nothing we could do,” Ella said quietly. “Nothing.”

The two boys awkwardly shuffled their feet, their eyes darting to each other and then back down at Roy.

He hadn’t lost consciousness, and there was no other sign of any trauma, just the gaping five-inch laceration on the back of his head.

“What do you think, Doctor? Just a couple of Steri-Strips?”

“No, Roy—I’m afraid it’s going to take a little more than that.”

Forty-five minutes and twenty-two stitches later, we had him back together.

I stood up slowly from my stool, stretched my aching back, and turned to Lori. “He’ll need a tetanus booster, and I’ll write something for pain.” I looked at Roy and said, “Hope that wasn’t too bad, Mr. Littlejohn. And I’m sorry it happened.”

“You did a fine job, and I want to thank you.”

Lori followed as I headed out of the room and into the hallway.

“Dr. Lesslie, I want to apologize for all of the people in the room, but—”

I stopped and looked at her. “I figured you had a reason.”

“His wife needed to be back there with him. But those two boys weren’t about to leave him. It just wasn’t going to happen.”

“Grandsons?” I was making some notes on Roy’s chart and didn’t look up at her.

“No, not grandsons.”

There was an odd tone in her voice, something I didn’t recognize. She turned and disappeared back into minor before I could say anything.

Jimmy Bagwell was standing at the nurses’ station as I walked up.

“Those are good people,” he nodded down the hallway. “It just burns me up what those guys did. It’s gonna be hard to get the Littlejohns to press charges, though. They know them, and said they didn’t want to get them into trouble.”

“After what they did to him?”

“I know. But you’ve got to understand Roy and Ella. The only way they’ll press charges is if I can convince them it’s best for the guys who did this. They need to be held accountable, and to grow up.”

I shook my head and started writing on Roy’s chart.

“You know about them, don’t you? Roy and Ella?”

I didn’t, and put down my pen and turned to the officer.

“No, I don’t. Tell me.”

Jimmy shifted a little and leaned on the countertop. “They live over off of White Street. Been there more than forty years. As I understand it, they could never have children of their own, so they started raisin’ some of the kids in the neighborhood, the ones who had trouble or whose parents…”

“Like foster parents?”

“Yes. No…well, sort of. They aren’t officially foster parents, and have never taken any money for takin’ these children into their home. They just provided a safe place for troubled kids until somethin’ else could be done for them. Sometimes the kids would stay with them for a couple of years. And sometimes it was the only caring and…love that these children ever knew. Like those boys back there.” He nodded again down the hallway.

“Those two boys? You mean—”

“Yeah, they’ve been livin’ with them for two, maybe three years. Their father’s been in prison and their mother…Well, she has a drug problem, and she disappeared one night. Haven’t heard or seen anything of her since. Maybe someday…”

I nodded and studied Jimmy’s face. A cloud had passed over it, and he sighed heavily.

“That must be why those boys wouldn’t leave his side,” I said quietly.

“Of course they wouldn’t. He and Ella are like a father and mother to them. Just like they are to a lot of people in town. Like I said, they’ve been doin’ this for more than forty years.”

“Wow, I had no idea. You just never know…I mean, they must have made a big difference in a lot of lives. Who knows what would have happened to all those children, or these two boys?”

The cloud passed from Jimmy Bagwell’s face. He stood up straight and smiled at me.

“Doc, I turned out okay.”

Let Slip the Dogs of War

More than one police officer has told me the most dangerous place in Rock Hill is the ER waiting room…

“Get another line going and get X-ray down here stat!”

The twenty-year-old was writhing in pain beneath my hands. He had been gut-shot with a small-caliber weapon at short range. Powder burns stippled the area around the entrance wound, just above his umbilicus. He was confused, combative—and we were losing him.

“And get lab—we need six units of blood now!”

Amy Connors was standing in the doorway, calmly making notes on a pad of paper. In spite of the chaos in the room, she wouldn’t miss anything.

“Amy, where’s the surgeon?”

“Still in cardiac putting in the chest tube.” She kept writing and didn’t look up. “They’re ready in the OR as soon as they get that done.”

Bill Chambers was the surgeon on call, and he was taking care of the first gunshot victim brought in by EMS. We needed help, and his partner was on the way in—none too soon for the young man in front of me.

“We gotta go, Doc.” Denton Roberts was grabbing some supplies for his unit. He and his paramedic partner had brought in my patient, and they would be heading back to the scene of this violence.

“How many more out there?” I asked him. Three ambulance units had already responded, and at least two victims had been sent by helicopter to the Charlotte trauma center.

“I know they’re still working three, maybe four gunshots. And there’s another half-dozen walking wounded with minor knife and broken-bottle wounds. We’ll bring them in last.”

Three, maybe four more gunshot victims. Where were we going to put them?

Denton and his partner dashed out the door and Virginia Granger walked into the room.

“What do you need most?” As always, she was direct and to the point. I was glad to see her.

“Probably a couple of MASH units—that would be helpful.”

Virginia had left for home hours ago. It was midnight, the Fourth of July, and still sweltering outside. Throw in a substantial dose of alcohol, some smoldering ill-will, and you had all the fixin’s for a brawl. She had heard what was going on and had come to help.

“I’ll go to triage and see if they need some assistance, and check back here in a few minutes,” she volunteered.

Did I say brawl?
I thought.
This is more of a war.
The principal combatant groups were the Courtney and Morrison families. Each group had some fringe gang members as well as “well-intentioned friends.” The altercation had started at a local nightclub—no, that designation would be too generous. It had started in a ramshackle bar and quickly spread into the parking lot. Handguns, knives, and beer bottles were wielded to resolve any significant differences, of which there were many. It was the police department’s worst nightmare, as it was for those of us who staff the ER.