plexiglass partition + velocity+impact=3 staples, 1ct scan, seven hrs in e.r
At 2am the city enters into an “anything goes” vortex. All governing forces that keep us and all that we love tethered to the earth are suspended until daybreak. Anything that had seemed improbable and obscene now reigns.
On the corner a short man of indeterminate age and ethnicity is amused, excited even, at what he is watching out in the intersection of Chrystie and Grand. What he sees is a young man dressed in a blazer with a bandage wrapped around his head standing over his girlfriend, also dressed for a party but now wearing a neck brace and restrained to a gurney. There is another person being placed on to a gurney, and a young woman has just run to him. An interested crowd begins to congregate on the corner and the short man makes sure to protect his spot to retain the best view.
It’s early Saturday morning in Chinatown and two cabs rest in the middle of the street. Just a few minutes earlier the two vehicles came together to make a perfect T at 30 miles per hour. The horizontal part of that T is now crushed and semi-concave, like a bent accordion. The passenger side windows now cover the ground like crushed ice. EMTs and NYPD have surrounded the site and play out a dramatic scene for the spectators. I would be watching too, and I am, but from on stage as one of the injured. I am in shock and getting in peoples’ way. I am a Civil War soldier with my head bandage. I am asking on the condition of the other cab’s passenger, who is now in a neck brace on a board in an ambulance. His eyes are glassy. His girlfriend has just arrived to the scene and is silent, her face ashen. The attending paramedic orders me back to my ambulance. I have overstepped my bounds.
I look over at a growing crowd of concerned expressions on the corner. In front is a little beaming face. I now realize how exposed we are and not everyone around us is sympathetic. This man is having a private moment and we can’t hide from it.
Our heads smacked against the partition and bounced back, one- two, just like that. Julia became panicked. I was dazed, but felt undamaged. I was overly relaxed. A cool wetness trickled down my neck. I ran my hand over the area of impact. My hand was now covered with blood. The driver was fine, of course. He had been wearing his seatbelt. We had not. In no time the police were opening our doors, calling EMS, and making decisions. Drivers were telling different stories. Perspectives conflicted. Nobody was accountable as people were wheeled into ambulances.
I was not paying attention, but Julia was. She screamed and I turned my head to see the black print of the fare declaration on the yellow door flash in front us. The sequence was immediate: breaks, blurred yellow and black, scream and impact.
We are now in the ambulance. There is a heavy-set middle age man attending to us in the back. He is an angel, a mensch, a former political campaign manager. Oxygen is being administered to Julia. Everyone is taking every precaution. She is secured down to the gurney with several redundant layers of Frankenstein straps. We are injured. We were in a car accident. The ambulance is bouncing on the street and the driver is yelling on her loudspeaker. There are sirens on, for us. That is frightening.
The ambulance stops in front of St.____ Hospital. I am ushered and Julia is wheeled into the E.R room. Blood pressure, heartbeat and insurance information are read and recorded. We have been processed. Our guardian angel EMT leads us, Julia still on a gurney, to twin beds in the corner of the room.
We are attended to quite quickly. A doctor appears and clears her spine, now freeing her from the brace and backboard. A sarcastic physician’s assistant takes pity on us and apologizes for our surroundings. This is the first of several comments from the staff that insinuate that they and we should be somewhere better. My head is irrigated, covering my pillow with a rosy stain. The local is applied followed by three staples, click-click- click. The flap on my head is now battened down. Now we wait for our CT Scans.
We sit upright and look out on the room. There are curtains that can cordon off beds, but they are not drawn unless a patient needs the handheld latrine. We are again lucky in that we were placed in the back of the room. The beds closer to the intake desk might as well be in the waiting room. Doctors rotate through brief rounds at the beds, looking at a computer screen and being out of sight.
There are two groups of patients in the room: those with alcohol related injuries and everyone else. E.R protocol mandates that anybody drinking that night sustaining a head injury be required to have a CT Scan. Triage honors severity, a fact that places us, we now taking photos of my head and our beds, in the back of the line. Julia feels a dent on her skull that is new since the accident. The doctor is called and he palpates the area. He says a skull fracture is possible, but her place on line is not improved.
In the mean time we get to know our neighbor, a salty guy with Tom Waits looks. His left ankle is inflated, but insists that all he needs is tape and as he lowers his voice, “direct action with personal narcotics”. Something he encourages us several times throughout the night to always have on hand for these types of situations. When I ask him what happened to his ankle he tells us that a couple of “negroids” hit him with a pipe and stole his ’72 Fender after a gig.
At some point, a no-nonsense doctor arrives to deal with Tom Waits’ ankle and ignoring his advice and philosophy proceeds to set the swollen limb into a cast. This process involves both of them and looks excruciatingly painful. He is given a shot of painkiller, which augments his own self-medication. He passes out within minutes. Later on that morning he will be woken up, placed in front of a humiliating four-legged walker and hurried out of the building by security.
He and another man I will call Hell Raiser, because of his completely bald dome covered in stitches, are clearly the annoyances of the staff. Despite each of their respective stories, being mugged with a pipe, and drugged with Mickies that lead to the fall down the subway stairs, both men are drunk and belligerent. This makes them, in the eyes of their caretakers, responsible for their injuries and therefore available to be judged; a pleasure indulged by those whose job it is to assist all people whether they be hostile or pleasant. Whether or not the attending doctor maintained that attitude is not clear, but he does a thorough job sewing up Hell Raiser, as his patient threatens him with a lawsuit. Damages were to include a favorite pair of slacks that were cut opened upon arrival.
If we are partially enjoying the routine played out in front of us, it is not through self-pitying schaudenfraud, but because it is genuinely amusing. And I wonder if the small man on the street felt the same way. What is not funny, very quickly is the suicide risk lying next to us forced to describe and list what he wanted to do to himself that night. And when the detached psychiatrist asks if he has family; he answers no, that he lives in a shelter. His voice is tired, defeated and he pleads to be taken seriously. He is released, and leaves alone. I think of what he must have overheard us talk about those several hours he lay next to us. Was it our discussion on when we should call our parents to tell them what happened? Or was it the jokes we were cracking about how awful everything here is? Or maybe it was when I said I was going to write an essay about all of the people and things I saw in this place?
At 7am we are served breakfast in bed. The nurses take a photo of us with our Styrofoam trays on our laps, two rolls, and cereal and O.J. Good times! We are embarrassed that we are the first people to be served. As we are also slightly embarrassed that, although we have been waiting for hours to get our final test done, we have been treated with respect and preference the whole time, as opposed to the others, who just have not been.
A few hours later our parents arrive, taking over our corner with coffee and concern. Loved, but unnecessary advocates at this time. A nurse finally notifies us that the CT machine is available. I am wheeled on a stretcher-not allowed to walk upstairs. Then it’s a led shield, a whirl, a buzz, and a red light and we’re done. After a pregnancy test, Julia goes through the same thing. All of our tests are negative, always a positive in medicine. Best of all there is no sign of a skull fracture on Julia. Now it’s hurry up and wait for the release papers.
Seven hours after being admitted we walk out into a grayish morning in the West Village. People are heading to brunch, the gym, church and home. We hail a cab, pause for a moment, enter and put on our seat belts- a first for me in a New York taxi. The driver tells us it’s his second day on the job and that he will need directions. He’s “sorry’, he says. “That’s O.K”, Julia says. “We’ll tell you where to go, just drive carefully please.” We are holding hands. It is different now in the back seat.
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