Do you Want to see What I Pulled out of my Body?

The things people say in the ER...

Work in an emergency room requires a strong constitution.  It requires that nurses and physicians walk boldly into rooms where patients say, for instance:

‘I pulled this out of that draining hole in my groin; they told me I should bring it for you to see.’ (Just who is that heartless monster who directed the person to bring said item to me?)

It requires that we courageously open the plastic bag, pull out the suspiciously wrapped bloody or fetid washcloth and expose the horrors wrapped therein.

One expects something to spring up and eat one’s eyeballs, or embed itself forever in the olfactory bulb like a nightmarish memory. A hidden alien, waiting to spring into action.

It is not a time to bend close, mouth agape in curiosity. It is a time to reach, head turned back, as if deciding whether to cut the blue or the red wire.

It requires that we smile when the very person who brought the horrid, festering bit of decaying flesh also asks:  ‘Can I have this Big Mac I brought?’ In the same bag, that is.

Years of nature documentaries have also led people to bring assorted spiders or even live venomous snakes for us to see. (Although in the South, these are mostly pre-crushed or severed for our convenience. My own father-in-law, Len, once assailed a rattlesnake in his bare-feet using a golf club. I’m not sure what the preferred club for snake-killin’ is.)

Of course, the era of the smart-phone in perpetual camera mode yields new terrors, albeit virtual.

‘I have a picture of my bowel movement, do you want to see it?’

‘This is my vomit last night and today, wait, let me scroll down…’ (Just how many photos did you take of your emesis, sir?)

Do not fear, colleagues, my fellow travelers, the cardiac arrest, the gunshot wound, the overdose. Do not fear the tin-foil bedecked schizophrenic woman afflicted by the CIA.  Do not fret over the vagaries of the Joint Commission or the complexities of computer systems. 

If you fear, fear the mysterious contents wrapped in plastic, lying in the same bag as the cheeseburger. Fear the images, the sound of unwrapping, the approaching scent. And be careful reaching into buckets wherein lie venomous snakes.

That is all…

Edwin