cart to the floor. We turned him over and found four more wounds.
“You don’t want to make a mistake like that more than once—if that often.”
Suddenly, there was a rush of people out of Trauma Two. Koesler, taken by surprise, was carried back by the human tide.
“They’re going to take X-rays,' Scott explained. “We have to do that. It’s tough to find out exactly where the slug is with one X-ray. See, X-rays are two-dimensional and the body is three-dimensional. We’ve got to find out whether the bullet is near a vital structure.”
“But there was only a trickle of blood. Doesn’t that mean the injury isn’t too serious?”
“Not necessarily. It may have done a lot of internal damage. She may be exsanguinating internally.'
Exsanguinating, Koesler thought.
After the X-rays were taken, the crowd returned to the room, with Scott and Koesler still at the outer fringe.
“They’ve catheterized her.” Scott continued his commentary for Koesler’s benefit. “See the bag at the foot of the cart? Bright yellow. That’s good; no blood in the urine. And see the bag hanging up there with the IV? That’s decompressing the air in her stomach. You make an abdominal incision without doing that and her whole stomach could pop out at you.”
Koesler did not want to think about that. In fact, he had approached this whole venture with a good measure of trepidation. Father Ed Thompson, a classmate, had needed a substitute in order to take a vacation. He might have asked another chaplain to cover, but the Archdiocese of Detroit was getting a bit thin on chaplains—a bit thin on priests in general. So Thompson had let his need be known through the priests’ newsletter.
Koesler had wrestled with the request for several days. Thompson would be gone during the first few weeks of January. Normally, so closely following Christmas, this was a slow time in the parish. It would not be terribly difficult to find a religious-order priest to cover for Koesler’s daily Mass schedule at St. Anselm’s. And Koesler ascertained that he would be able to fit the hospital’s single Sunday Mass into St. Anselm’s weekend schedule.
He wanted to help his friend and classmate. Yet he hesitated. Koesler knew himself well enough to question his effectiveness in a hospital setting. It was one thing to visit patients occasionally, stay awhile, and then leave. Quite another thing to be ultimately responsible for their spiritual welfare throughout their hospital stay.
Furthermore, Koesler was unsure how he would react to this very situation—a hospital emergency. He had no history of being especially cool and calm in the face of blood and death. And that, by and large, was his image of a hospital: a place where people, especially on admission, bled a lot. And of course a healthy percentage of them died there. No one was about to kid him; he’d read about carts with bodies and DOA tags dangling from toes.
In the end a combination of charity and curiosity won the day. He wanted to help his friend and at the same time he thought this experience might add a dimension to his parochial ministry.
So here he was, standing in the emergency unit of St. Vincent’s Hospital, awaiting the arrival of the family of an elderly woman who had just been pronounced dead in Trauma One. While waiting, he was witnessing the treatment of a frightened woman who had been shot. Well, at least there wasn’t a lot of blood. Thank God.
“See those X-rays mounted on the viewer over there?” Scott resumed his explication.
Koesler nodded.
“See the frontal view? See the slug on the right side? It looks like it’s resting right next to the spine. Now, see the side view? It’s actually nowhere near the spine. But they’re going to have to dig through a lot of layers to get it.”
Koesler gave thanks that he would not be doing the digging.
A doctor began explaining to the patient where the bullet was and what they proposed to do about it. He was interrupted by a nurse who related the patient’s blood pressure.
“Uh-oh,” said Scott. “The pressure fell. They’ll take her to surgery stat.”
He proved prophetic. Attendants unhooked bottles trailing tubes inserted in various orifices, the cart’s brakes were released, and the patient was whisked away.
Scott intercepted an exiting doctor. “Who did it? Anybody find out?”
“Complete stranger,” the doctor answered. “She was coming out of the bank. Some kid shot her and grabbed her purse.”
“Good Lord! They used to just knock people down. What’s this world coming to!”
A loud barking was heard.
“Now, dammit, who let a dog get in here?” Scott was angry.
At that moment, a laughing nurse entered the trauma area from the main emergency section. “It’s not a dog. It’s a man who thinks he’s a dog!”
“What!”
Koesler followed Scott, who moved at a brisk pace, determined to get to the bottom of this nonsense.
They entered a long, narrow space with a totally white decor, partitioned on one side into ten curtained stalls. At the far end of the room was a naked man, indeed barking in fine imitation of a dog. Several attendants were slowly closing in on him. When the man lifted one leg to urinate, Scott could take it no longer. He turned away, breaking up in laughter.
Koesler followed suit. When he looked up again, three very elderly nuns in most traditional habit came into view. All three were chattering like magpies. Catching sight of the naked man, as one they covered their eyes and turned away. But they continued talking without missing a beat. The middle nun, easily the eldest, appeared to be injured.
“You certainly have a lively pond here,” Koesler observed to Scott.
“You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. It’s still morning, and a Monday to boot. It usually gets more interesting as the day progresses.”
Koesler decided he could wait for the buildup. Waiting, in fact, was what he was doing. For the family of the deceased.
* * *
Forewarned, St. Vincent’s emergency unit was preparing for the imminent delivery of one male and one female, both Caucasian, who had been involved in an auto accident at Cass and Lafayette. The EMS crew had called in with their estimated time of arrival and condition of the injured.
St. Vincent’s emergency staff calmly began laying out the equipment their experience told them would be needed. There was no tension. Time enough for that when the victims arrived. If anything, the atmosphere was one of bantering.
“Who were those three nuns?”
“The three old ones?”
“Come on! Were there three young ones?”
“Carmelites.”
“Discalced Carmelites?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought they weren’t supposed to talk.”
“They aren’t.”
“What is this? They wouldn’t shut up.”
“In a situation like this, when there’s an accident, that’s an exception. Then they are allowed to talk.”
“What was the problem, anyway?”
“The oldest one fell down a flight of stairs.”
“You mean because she fell down the stairs, the other ones could talk?”
“I guess that’s it.”
There was a slight pause.
“Do you suppose the two younger ones pushed the older one?”
Koesler smiled. The relatives of the dead woman still had not arrived.
There was a flurry of action at the admitting doors. Two stretchers were removed from the EMS van and placed on gurneys, which were then hurried into Trauma Rooms One and Two respectively.
Doctors Scott and Kim in One began working on the man.
