Oftentimes it’s hard to convey the humor behind the situations most of you find stressful. But to us, it’s how we get by. It’s how we deal with people who are calling us every name in the book, trying to bite us, spit on us, rip our skin off with their nails.
Let me be brutally honest with you right now. A situation tonight in the ER brings this one about. The black lives matter movement. Those non black people you see wandering the streets screaming about BLM don’t have a clue what Police are going through nor do most of them even know what black Americans go through. Please don’t get me wrong, black lives absolutely matter. I grew up in a predominantly racist area where I fought against racism. I believe in equal rights. No one should be discriminated against based on their sex, skin color, or any other label society try's to put on people. Point blank, I don’t believe in labels. But that is my disclaimer and back to the actual story.
But let’s be real here, some of you out there are taking it too damn far.
We’ll talk about it later, said the tall, calm police officer standing by the bed of the patient he just brought to us.
Let’s pause here and explain something most Don’t know. When you come to a hospital two things are certain 1. Medical trumps Law which means, in a hospital with the caliper of The War Zone, law enforcement has very little jurisdiction if any at all. And 2. You lose all your rights. Seriously, they no longer exist. Why? Because medical and our staff's safety is more important than the rights you know nothing about. A hospital is its own ecosystem and if the hospital is like ours we have our own court room for extreme situations.
Now back to our story.
My co worker and I heard a mans voice screaming “rape” from the ER bay coming from the back of an ambulance. Police are standing by. We both look at each other and with a quick nod we walk over to the crowd. You’ll notice a lot that my team is a team with few words. We base a lot of our important interactions with body language.
I look into the back of the ambulance to see an adult male with no shirt on, skin color is white as the inside of a coconut. So white that if we were in the sun, he would be blinding. He is restrained to the gurney screaming about his rights that have been taken away. Police are standing by, we nod at each other. Police backup to let us take over. We stand by as the ambulance heroes wheel him out of the back and then follow alongside the gurney making our way to his operating room. The patient is now kicking and thrashing all the way down the hall.
Our new patient has a massive gash in his left arm. His brown, dirty pants are soaked in his urine, blood, and torn. My partner and I joke about who's getting “lowers” (meaning legs) when we put him on the hospital bed and transfer restraints. Though we have gloves on, nobody wants to touch that. As we calmly walk this screaming man down the ER, I think about my life decisions on starting this type of career. I’ll never get over how strange it is, that this is what I do for a living.
His dark brown curly hair is flopping around as he’s trying to spit on the medical staff and officers. When the spitting didn’t work, he made several attempts to bite us. as they always do I jump in on one side and get ready for the restraints to come off and put ours on.
As we start the process, he is screaming and attempting to kick and thrash around even more. My favorite part of these moments is how calm the staff is. None of us get angry, yell back, or anything besides our normal calm voices. We speak calmly to each other about the plan on how best to treat this patient.
His gash in his arm is becoming more noticable. It was straight down to the tendon, I saw it first hand. Clever smile I waited for the blood to start squirting. This man would surely die without medical treatment. Therefore, his rights in no way have been violated. Not to mention he was under arrest as soon as he was done in the hospital.
When it is time to pull him over to our hospital bed, he tries to lean up and bite my hand but our medical staff is already on it. One of our Registered Nurses grabs a towel and pulls his head back safely to the bed so he could no longer make attempts to bite or spit on any of us. Holding a person's head down is considered a medical procedure, we as officers do not touch the head. We do everything we can to protect the hostile patient regardless of his actions or words towards us. How many of you can say that? Someone just called you a little b****, what is your reaction. Thought so…
At this point the entire area is filled with officers and medical staff attempting to get to the gash in his arm as we restrain him to his bed.
And that’s when I heard it. “You guys are only doing this to me because I am black.” This came after many words were screamed at us. Vial threats, name calling, spitting, biting… But nothing prepared me for this one.
I looked up at the police officer that brought him in, he was standing behind our staff. I saw the grin in his eyes and he said to me “oh yeah, he identifies as black.” I look back down to his white bare chest and lose all words. Dumbfounded! Wait.. What?
In most of our trauma rooms we have curtains that separate our patients. We are a bit outdated, we know.
I hear from the bed beside us “No, you're not, boy you are white as a snowflake.” In the mix of it all he managed to offend the black women beside us trying to keep her child who was seriously injured from being afraid of the chaos next to them. The medical team and I busted out laughing. None of us could contain it. It was one of the best moments of my career.
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He continued to scream at us so I started speaking with him. I asked him questions about him as a person and for a moment he quieted down. Being a woman in this field has its perks. Men usually don’t want to fight us. But as soon as I stopped he started screaming again about us being racist.
The restraints were on and the medication was starting to sedate him. However, the screams proceeded and continued to progress. By the time we were done, he confessed to murder multiple times, assault on his neighbor, theft. And the list kept going. I looked at the police officer one last time and with his devious grin said “We’ll talk about it later.” And then made his way back to his bedside to read him his Miranda rights.
I checked on the women beside us before leaving. She leaned over her little girl stroking her hair. Speaking to her calmly. She looked up at me and said… “That man is white as a snowflake.” I laughed and nodded as I walked away.
"If you are white, please don't take the glory away from those that are truly black, let them have their moment."
