Miracles in the ER (8 page)

“Is nurse Gray here?” he asked, his voice quiet and his eyes searching the department. “I think that’s her name.”

Lori’s face flushed. She quickly turned around and walked back out to triage.

“Harriet Gray?” I remembered his outburst and wondered what in the world was on his mind. And whether it was good.

“Yes, I think so. The…large nurse, gray-headed?”

“That would be Harriet,” I nodded, studying his eyes. They continued to wander around the area and finally locked on mine.

“I…I need to talk with her. For just a moment.”

We stood there, looking at each other.
What does this man want?

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible, Mr. Watts.”

“She doesn’t work here anymore?” His shoulders slumped and he started looking around again.

“No, she died a couple of weeks ago.”

He froze, let out a long, loud sigh, and stared at the floor.

“I should have come sooner. I…”

“Is there anything I can help you with?”

Jackie Watts looked up at me, his eyes softened now, and a smile began to form on his face.

“I’ve been in prison, Doc. For the last three years. Best thing that could have ever happened to me. Not at first, though. I was a real troublemaker, I guess you’d say. But I started thinkin’, and wonderin’ what the rest of my life was gonna be like. And then I started thinkin’ about what nurse Gray told me, that day I was over in that room, handcuffed to the bed.”

He turned and pointed to cardiac.

“You remember that day, Doc?”

“I remember, Jackie.”

“She got me pretty upset, and you were gettin’ upset with me, the way I was carrying on. The reason was, I didn’t like what she was tellin’ me. She wasn’t yellin’ at me or anything. I just didn’t like what she was sayin’. But you know what? I never forgot it. Never. I started thinkin’ about it in prison, and every day, I repeated her words. She told me, ‘Jackie, you’re better than this. But don’t worry, the Lord’s not finished with you yet.’ And you know what, Doc? He wasn’t. And he’s still not. I’m doin’ fine now,
and just wanted to come by and…” He paused and took a deep breath, tears glistening in his eyes. “And let her know. At least I got to tell you. And I’m thankful for that.”

We stood there, silent, and I knew what he needed. But it was Amy who got out of her chair, walked around the desk, and grabbed Jackie. She locked him in a tight, suffocating hug.

“This is from Harriet.”

Burning Bridges

“What happened this time?” I recognized the name on the chart Lori Davidson dropped into the “to be seen” basket.

Toby Bridges—busted lip.

“Another fight.” She sighed and shook her head. “Of course it wasn’t his fault, just like it never is. Said he had to step in and defend one of his friends. The problem was the other guy had a pool stick in his hand and hit Toby in the mouth with it. I don’t see any teeth missing, but it’s going to take awhile to put back together.”

Toby was well known to the ER staff. The seventeen-year-old had carved out a troubling path during his teenage years, frequently ending up in the emergency department with an assortment of injuries, and frequently with an entourage of uniformed officers. He was bright and should have figured things out by now. His parents, both professionals, had tried everything—counseling, military school, tough love, really tough love. Nothing was working. Toby Bridges was headed for trouble.

“Alright, I’ll go get started.”

Lori handed the clipboard to me. “He’s been drinking again.”

I glanced at the clock over the ambulance entrance—
4:32 p.m.
—and shook my head.

Toby was lying on the far-right stretcher in minor trauma and holding a piece of cotton gauze to his injured mouth.

“Hello, Dr. Lesslie.” His speech was slurred, and I wasn’t sure if it was the gauze or the alcohol or both.

“Hello, Toby. Lori tells me you’ve been in another tussle.”

The nurse had a suture tray ready beside his stretcher, and I sat down on a stool and rolled over next to him.

“I didn’t see that pool stick.” He mumbled, shook his head, and took
the gauze away from his mangled lip. Lori was right—it was going to take awhile to put this back together.

Toby was fourteen years old when I first saw him in the ER. His mother and two police officers brought him in. He and a couple of friends had decided to break into a neighbor’s house but hadn’t planned on the alarm system and the quick response of a nearby squad car. The approaching siren had caused the boys to panic, and Toby ran through the sliding glass door leading onto the back porch. It shattered, leaving him with several large, deep gashes of his wrists and forearms.
That
took awhile to put back together too.

A close family friend in town happened to be an attorney and was able to shield Toby from any serious charges.

“I’m not sure we’re doing the boy any favor here,” she told his parents. “He needs to get his act straight, but he also doesn’t need something like this on his record.”

The next time Toby wasn’t as fortunate. He was fifteen years old when EMS brought him to the ER late one night.

“The kid’s beat up pretty bad,” Denton told me. He and his partner were moving Toby onto the stretcher in major trauma. “Whoever did this rolled him in a ditch and left him for dead. A truck driver just happened to catch a glimpse of what he thought was a body and called it in. He’s mighty lucky.”

“Don’t know if I’d call him lucky.”

Denton and I twisted around. Detective Terry Jamison was standing in the doorway with his arms folded across his chest. He was casually chewing on the end of a yellow pencil.

“100 over 60,” Lori told us. “Pupils equal but sluggish. Doesn’t respond much to pain.”

My attention refocused on the injured teenager. We spent the next hour getting him stabilized and determining the extent of his injuries—three fractured ribs, a fractured jaw, a bruised spleen, and a closed-head injury. He was starting to wake up and was trying to speak.

“I’d like to ask him a few questions when he’s able.” Detective Jamison stood at the foot of the stretcher, drumming a notepad with his pencil.

“Probably going to be a little while, Terry,” I told him. “What do you know about this?”

“We’ve got a pretty good idea about who beat him, but we need his confirmation. Looks like a drug deal gone bad. My guess is that he was trying to score some marijuana and stiffed the wrong people. If it’s who we think it is, these guys are bad actors. But they’re not stupid. They left a bag of weed in his pants pocket, enough for him to be charged as a dealer. Like I said, I don’t know if I’d call this kid lucky.”

He wasn’t. He recovered from his injuries, but was unable to avoid the long arm of the law. He spent some time in juvenile detention, but was soon out and quickly back to his old ways. If ever a young man was destined for a bad ending, it was Toby Bridges.

Two months after I sewed up his lip, EMS brought him to the ER again. This time it looked as if he had reached that bad ending.

Toby had lost his driver’s license and was driving a friend’s pickup when he lost control, crossed the median, and hit an SUV. He was on a backboard when the paramedics wheeled him into the department.

“What’s he got?” Lori asked Denton Roberts.

“We put him in spinal protocol as a precaution,” the paramedic answered. “Looks like he has a forehead laceration but that’s it—nothing else that we could find. The driver of the other vehicle was not so lucky. Broken femur and maybe a couple of ribs. He was helicoptered to Charlotte.”

“Wass goin’ on?”

Toby reeked of alcohol and his glazed eyes wandered around the room.

Denton looked at Lori and shook his head. “Where do you want him?”

“I guess take him to minor, bed C. The only problem is Ezekiel Stevenson is back there with his grandchild. But there’s no other bed available.”

The African Methodist Episcopal churches had a big presence in Rock Hill, and Ezekiel was the minister of one of them. He had just brought one of his grandchildren in with a shoulder injury. The eight-year-old girl probably had a broken collarbone, the result of one of an orthopedist’s best friends—a trampoline.

“Let’s just hope he behaves himself,” Lori added.

“Wass goin’ on?”

By the time we finished taking care of Toby, Ezekiel and his granddaughter were gone. Toby was able to stand, talk, and walk out of the department with two police officers, his hands cuffed behind his back. He was facing serious jail time.

Five years passed before I saw Toby Bridges again, once more in major trauma. It was a gunshot to the chest, and I called for a stat portable X-ray.

“Already on the way.” Lori had started one IV and was working on another.

The door to major opened and the portable machine lumbered into the room, guided by one of the radiology techs.

“Start with a chest,” I said, glancing at the tech. “And—”

Lori looked up at me and then followed my stare. Her jaw dropped.

It was Toby Bridges, dressed in the neat white jacket and slacks of a radiology technician.

He smiled at us and maneuvered the machine to the side of the stretcher. With quiet expertise, he positioned the cassette under the patient’s chest, shot the film, and hurried out of the room.

Later, we had a chance to talk.