ER

Because I had served as a medic (SAC 452^nd Medical Aero-Vac), when I came out of the service in ’67 I was hired as an orderly at Santa Monica Hospital in the Emergency Room. At that time, SM ER served all of the west side of LA. I had no idea what I was in for. A busy ER on a Saturday night is nearly impossible to describe as it was surreal to experience. Located in the basement of the hospital, with an alleyway entrance, the ER had pipes running down the hallway ceilings, giving the whole an aura of a sterile industrial madhouse. The pipes were quite handy, as whenever the police brought in a miscreant prior to booking, they would cuff him to the pipes while he waited. These injuries were often relatively minor: stitches from the arrest struggle, wounds from a fight…a burglar who fell through a glass roof…some knife wounds. Often the injured had not quite sobered up yet, so they would dangle from the pipes, yelling and cursing while the ER personnel dealt with some or all of the following: a 400lb+ man who fell out of a small rowboat trying to midnight fish under the pier…he is projectile vomiting in the cubicle…it took six of us to get him off the gurney into a bed; a small boy who had fallen out of a bunk bed and broke his arm. Because there was no one to care for them, the mom brought her other four to the waiting room, all in PJs, sleeping like stacked cordwood in a corner; the man in room #1 who has suffered a serious heart incident….he will not survive…his wife and small children, also in PJs, are waiting anxiously for news; the fellow in room #2 who took a bullet in the ass while trying to escape over a back fence from some minor crime scene. He is laughing and joking about it until he suddenly dies, the bullet having severed an artery; two guys who got in a fight at a party and fell through a plate glass window. They are both getting sewn up, but most of the party has come along in support and half of them clearly do not like the other half. A fight breaks out; and there was always the fellow who sprained or broke his wrist who is screaming that no one is paying attention to him and that he has been there “for three fucking hours!”;  a woman is being wheeled in the door with a crowning baby clearly in view; one of the partiers pukes.

And then the action starts. All across the Westside, last call is announced about 1:50AM. Hundreds order a final round, stagger to their cars, perhaps taking another 3 minutes to get the key in the door and then into the ignition and then another few minutes to nearly annihilate themselves or someone else on the roadway. They are all brought to the ER. The guy with the sore arm is threatening to sue. He is screaming at the doctor who had gone out to explain to the waiting family that their father had passed. One of the prisoners, now sewn up, makes a break down the alley. A drug overdose arrives. Amid it all, police radios echo down the corridors, mixing with crying children, the constant hospital page calls, loud cursing, and moans of childbirth. Meanwhile, I am (almost) grateful to be called away to the fourth floor to re-catherize an old fellow who ripped his Foley catheter out (Have you ever seen a Foley catheter???)

I only worked there about 6 months. I was a bit of a liability to them, as I was trained to do about 100 times more than an orderly could/should legally do. Basically, an orderly could empty bedpans, clean up spew, and help move people. (In the Air Force, the doctor would finish his work, look at me and say “OK, close him up” Close him up???) So, while I had administered 1000s of shots and hundreds of stitches just months before, the apex of my skill set was the ability to stick a tube up a dick…and now you probably have to go to med school for that too. I do think they hated to see me go. For one thing, I was reasonably calm under pressure and they were thrilled that I was a world class catherizer, a skill that has thankfully not been called for much since. To this day, people will often comment “Gee, you were a paramedic in the service. You must have seen a lot.” I tell them, “You have no idea”.