Emergency! Read Online Free PDF Page B

and made all the preparations to retrieve Grandpa’s body. A few days later, hundreds of people came to rememberhim, and the line of cars that accompanied the funeral procession stretched for several blocks.
    When I look back at this painful experience, one thing stands out. I will always remember the nurse who helped me start the painful process of grieving. Her kindness helped remind me to reach out from my heart to the survivors of the dead. I will always remember that a John Doe is somebody’s father, brother, or grandfather. Even my own.
    AL LOPEZ, M.D.              
    Los Angeles, California

EL HOWIE
    I was a fourth-year medical student rotating through an academic Emergency Department in the southwestern United States. There was a first-year resident, Howie, from the Midwest, who was struggling to learn Spanish. Spanish did not come easily to him, but that didn’t stop him from attempting to communicate with Spanish-speaking patients. Howie was one who believed that any lack of skill could be masked by a loud, authoritative voice.
    One lazy Saturday afternoon, a car drove up to the Emergency entrance. A young man ran into the Emergency Department screaming, in Spanish, that his wife was having a baby. Also in the car were several soon-to-be grandparents. Howie, hoping for a delivery, ran to the car and found the head of the baby beginning to show. He positioned himself between the mother’s legs, among a sea of grandparents, and urged her to push by yelling,
“Puta! Puta! Puta!”
The grandmother began to cry and the husband needed to be restrained.
    What Howie was trying to say was
“Puja!”
(“Push!”) Instead, to this young woman who was delivering her first baby in the backseat of a car, he was yelling, “Whore! Whore! Whore!”
    THOMAS MOTYCKA, M.D.     
    Columbia, South Carolina

NOT EVER
    I was finishing up an unusually busy Thursday shift. Seven patients had been brought in all at once from a car accident. Fortunately, the injuries were minor, but the paperwork had kept me busy until two hours beyond my 3 P.M. changeover time. Finally, I finished. Just before I headed out the door, one of the nurses called me to the phone. “An emergency,” she said.
    â€œEmergency.” In no other setting could that word be so overused. The nurse’s grim expression puzzled me as I reached for the phone with my left hand, my right holding my white coat slung over my shoulder.
    â€œPhilip?” my wife’s voice sobbed. “I think our daughter has been killed.”
    â€œWhat?”
My knees buckled as my shout reverberated around the large chamber.
    During my wife’s dance lesson, our four-year-old, Lauren, had wandered away from the child care area. She had been found in the otherwise unoccupied weight room, asphyxiated by a two-hundred-pound bench press she had dislodged across her chest.
    Two good friends from the nursing staff drove me to the medicalcenter where the ambulance had taken my sweet baby. I refused to fantasize. Lauren’s condition was critical, but I knew so little that I concentrated on good thoughts and hopes. Tears rolled down my cheek.
    On my arrival, I was led to the “quiet room,” which is reserved for grieving families, to join my weeping wife. I do not like quiet rooms. I needed to be with my daughter. My daughter needed me with her. My wife needed me to be with my daughter, too, for she could not.
    â€œThe doctor told me that if she recovers, she’s going to be brain damaged,” she said. “Did I do the wrong thing to bring her back?” My wife had just finished recertifying in CPR training the week before and had administered CPR until the ambulance arrived.
    â€œNo,” I insisted. “No one can tell what will result.”
    A nurse led me into the trauma room where the pediatric surgeon was having difficulty starting the arterial line.