Miracles in the ER (15 page)

While the three men and the dog watched, the foot twitched once, and then again. This started Moses barking even louder.

“Shh! Listen!” Denton held out his hand.

Ernie reached down and grabbed Moses by the collar. “Quiet, boy. Quiet.”

“Hear that?” Denton whispered.

Six human and two canine ears strained mightily, all eyes locked on the dangling shoe.

A low moan floated down to them from the roof, and then a hand slowly came into view, waved weakly, and collapsed back into the darkness.

Denton Roberts shared this story with me two days later in the ER. He and Rob had brought in an ankle injury from a local skating rink and he had pulled me aside at the nurses’ station.

“It was a twenty-eight-year-old guy who’d just left a bar over in York. Lost control of his car, flipped it a couple of times, and was thrown through the passenger window. No seat belt, of course. Landed on the roof, right where we found him. Or right where Moses found him.”

“How did you get him down?” This was a crazy story, but I knew it was true. Parts of it had been in the local paper.

“That wasn’t easy. The police got there, then a fire engine. We used their bucket to get him to the ground and then helicoptered him to the trauma center in Charlotte.”

I stopped writing on the chart in front of me and looked over at Denton. “How’s he doing now?”

“That’s the darnedest thing, Doc.” The paramedic put his hands on his hips and shook his head. “That guy found out where Rob and I were working and walked into the station this morning, pretty as you please. Had a couple of scratches on his arms and face, but that was it. Nothing serious. The docs in Charlotte couldn’t believe he’d flown a good thirty or forty feet in the air. They thought it must have been a miracle. Either that or his blood alcohol of four times legally drunk. What’s that they say about God looking after little children, fools, and drunks? Anyway, he didn’t remember much of anything, except feelin’ like he was flyin’ and then a dog barkin’. That’s one lucky guy, and he knows it. Somebody upstairs was lookin’ after him that night.”

Little children, fools, and drunks. Two out of three. He was
more
than lucky.

Miracle Worker

I heard and felt the
clunk
as the thirty-year-old man’s dislocated shoulder slipped back into place. He had injured it while playing rugby, and Jim Given, our youngest partner, had been the first to see him.

“I’ve only done a couple of these, Robert, and could use your help if you have the time.”

I had walked him through the procedure and steadied the man’s shoulder while Jim tried several maneuvers.

Clunk
—and it was done.

“Ahhhhh. That feels great.”

In spite of the morphine and Versed on board, our patient had been grimacing and tightly squinting his eyes. Now they opened and he looked into the face of Jim Given.

“Thank you, Doc,” he mumbled, a huge smile spreading from ear to ear. “You’re a miracle worker.”

“No, I’m not a miracle worker.” Jim stammered and shook his head. “I’m just glad that—”

“Doc, I’m telling you—you’re a
miracle
worker.”

Thus are legends born.

“Thanks, Dr. Given—I know I’ll feel better real soon.”

Thad Summers held a prescription in his hand and waved it in the air as he walked down the hallway. He worked in the hospital’s engineering department and had come by the ER to be seen, complaining of a bad case of bronchitis.

“That guy thinks you walk on water,” I said to Jim Given. He was standing beside me at the nurses’ station and glanced up. I nodded at Thad as he disappeared around the corner in the back of the department.

“Yeah, he says you’re a real miracle worker.” Amy Connors looked up from her logbook and chuckled.

“What makes you say that?” Given asked her. He was young and green enough to remember how to blush, and his face turned a light pink.

“Remember when you saw Thad a couple of months ago?” Amy cocked her head to one side. “He came down here complainin’ of low-back pain. He thought it was sciatica. His doctor had ordered a scan of his back lookin’ for a ruptured disc but nothin’ showed up. His doc had him on a bunch of medicine but he wasn’t gettin’ any better.”

Jim Given rested an elbow on the counter and rubbed his chin. “I’m not sure if—”

“You were standing right where you are now.” Amy pointed to the floor behind him. “He walked by holdin’ his back and you asked him what the problem was. He started talkin’ about his back and the scan and that he wasn’t gettin’ any relief.”

“I remember now.” Given nodded his head and slapped the countertop. “He had a huge wallet in his back pocket and I told him to get rid of it, or at least move it from where it was. It was big enough to be pressing on his sacroiliac area and cause his symptoms.”

“Well, you were right,” Amy beamed. “He got rid of that wallet and within a week his pain was gone. He told me you were a miracle worker for sure.”

Given blushed again. “I don’t know about that. It just seemed obvious to me, and I—”

“What about the mother last week?” I interrupted. “The woman who came in with her three-year-old because he wouldn’t move his elbow? His uncle had been slinging him around by his arms and the child started crying and wouldn’t move his left arm.”

“That was straightforward.” Given shook his head and waved his hand at me. “Nursemaid’s elbow. Any rookie would have known that.”

“Not necessarily,” I corrected him. “She had already seen her family doctor and he thought the arm was broken. That’s why they were here—to get an X-ray. Didn’t you take care of that child while he was out in triage?”

“Yeah, I did. Jeff Ryan grabbed me and took me out there and I reduced it while the boy was sitting in his mother’s lap.”

“We heard him holler way out here,” Amy laughed. “But in a couple of minutes his mother brought him through triage and he was smilin’ and
wavin’ at everybody—with his
bad
arm. You were already in another room, and that momma just kept on singin’ your praises.”

“Straightforward,” Given murmured. “Like I said.”

“What
wasn’t
straightforward was that fifteen-year-old girl you took care of last weekend,” I reminded him. “Brought in by EMS, unresponsive.”

“The one who took her father’s medication?” Amy leaned forward in her chair, her arms on the desktop.

“Yeah, that’s the one.” I looked at Given.

He stood beside me, quietly nodding. “Now
that
was difficult,” he sighed. “At least until we were able to get a reliable history. Nobody knew anything, except that she was unconscious, passed out. The whole family was yelling and screaming and running around in circles. Grandma thought the girl had a stroke or something. I think it was her little brother who finally came forward and told us what happened.”

“Didn’t she take her father’s diabetic pills?” Amy asked. “That’s what I seem to remember.”

“You’re right, Amy,” Given nodded at her. “Her little brother had gotten hold of their father’s diabetic medicine and he dared her to take some. She took enough to drop her blood sugar to the point where she lost consciousness. The boy was too scared to say anything until he thought she was going to die.”

Jeff Ryan had walked up to the nurses’ station and heard this last story. “That’s right. You ordered IV glucose and we barely touched her with it when she sat straight up on the stretcher, looked around, and started singing.”

“Strangest reaction I’ve ever seen.” Jim Given shook his head and looked down at the countertop.

“No,” Jeff laughed. “The
strangest
reaction I’ve ever seen was when that grandmother grabbed you and started squeezing and slinging you around. Said you had saved the girl’s life and that you had a special anointing, or something like that.”

“Anointin’?” Amy asked. “You mean like in the Bible?”

“Listen, it was simple,” Given explained, a hint of exasperation in his voice. “Once we knew the problem, it was easy to fix with some glucose. We got her blood sugar up and she—”

“And she started singing,” Jeff chuckled. “And grandma started hugging and hollering. It didn’t matter
how
it happened, you were the real hero that day.”

Jim stood there and shook his head. “Okay, that’s about enough.”

He was rattled and we weren’t about to let him off the hook.

“Now that you mention it, Jeff, Dr. Given
has
been the hero a lot lately. What about that twenty-year-old who took his friend’s antipsychotic medication?”

“I almost forgot about that guy.” The nurse leaned against the counter and rubbed his hands together. “He came through the ambulance entrance late one night with his girlfriend. She was screaming for help at the top of her lungs. It was one of the oddest things I’ve ever seen—the medicine was causing his hands to scrunch up and he was leaning to one side. His head was down on his chest and he couldn’t talk because his tongue wouldn’t work.”

I looked over at Jim. His eyes were closed and he slowly shook his head. “Dystonic reaction,” he muttered. “Straightforward.”

“Dr. Given knew just what to do,” Jeff continued. “‘IV Benadryl!’ he hollered. We got a line started, gave him the Benadryl, and in a couple of minutes that guy was standing up straight, talking, and heading for the door. It was
something
all right.”

“What about the eighty-year-old gentleman from down in Edgemoor?” Amy was on the edge of her chair, rocking back and forth. “Said he couldn’t hear a thing and needed some help. Remember him?”

“That’s right!” Jeff slapped his palms on the countertop. “I almost forgot about him too. I was working triage that afternoon and put him in the ENT room. Nice guy, but he couldn’t hear a thing. Dr. Given went in, examined him, and asked Lori to wash out his ears. She said she got enough stuff out to plant potatoes. But it fixed him. He could hear.”

Jim Given’s eyes were still closed and he sighed loudly.

“Lori said when Dr. Given went in to check him, the man jumped up and hollered ‘Hallelujah!’ Knocked the irrigation stand over and water went everywhere.”

“Now
that
would have been an anointin’,” Amy smirked.

“That’s it. I’ve had enough.”

Jim Given spun around and stomped off down the hallway.