emergency room Archives

Bread and Butter

Samantha L. Wood December 27, 2024 6 Comments

Shattering the relative peace of an early Sunday morning, a chorus of assorted ringtones echoes through the emergency department where I work as an attending physician. The noise is a heads-up from an incoming ambulance, directed to the ED staff members’ portable phones.

I sigh and set down the cup of cafeteria coffee I’d been enjoying: The pace of the day is about to pick up. I unclip my phone from the waistband of my scrub pants. Sitting next to me, Ben, the senior resident, grabs his phone from the pocket of his fleece vest.

The Sturgeon

Patricia Massel May 3, 2024 2 Comments

Kind eyes, and a fragile body like a reed
Barely just a presence on the room, as if almost fading
Already into the twilight

Under gentle, careful hands
His body unveils its story with its familiar tells.
The slender wrists, childlike, beneath pitted skin.
Deeply scooped recess above collarbones.
A subtle, solid wedge of liver,
Looming ominously below ribcage.

Acute Behavioral Crisis

Don Brunnquell January 27, 2023 6 Comments

“Who am I, do you know me,” she cries,
this day when earth has turned to rot and mud.
she can not see but for the blaze of anger,
she can not hear the softer voices calling.

He Said They Move Too Slowly

Joseph Bocchicchio September 2, 2022 No Comments

The ER doc said the trains here
Go too slow
For anybody to kill themselves
By stepping out
In front of one
As if they were sleepy little engines
Without much power
That drifted ghost-like through town
Quietly at night

In Need of a Prayer

Jo Marie Reilly December 16, 2020 11 Comments

The new patient’s name is Emmanuel. He was sent from his nursing home to our emergency room with a cough and fever. The oxygen level in his blood is well below normal, and he’s gasping for air.

It’s my third week in the local community hospital ER. I’ve been putting in extra on-call time during the COVID pandemic. It’s been rough to get back into the emergency setting while continuing my day job as a family doctor and medical educator. I’ve been sharing admissions with the hospitalist, who’s joined me in the on-call room.

“I’ll take him,” I tell my colleague.

Flashback

Rachel Mallalieu November 20, 2020 10 Comments

I notice the name on the waiting room
tab; it’s not a remarkable name,
but one I remember
from elementary school

The Big Chill

Aarya Krishnan Rajalakshmi December 6, 2019 7 Comments

Tonight was yet another night on call in our emergency department–a chilly winter night on which I did a cruel deed: I discharged a homeless man back out into the cold.

This is a routine event in the life of psychiatry residents like myself. Normally, no one would bat an eye. It shouldn’t have mattered to me, either–except that the previous night I’d had to walk home from the hospital parking garage in decidedly adverse weather.

The streets were covered with slush and ice, which, along with the heavy rain and bitter winds, made my usually effortless fifteen-minute walk a nightmare. As wind gusts kept upturning my umbrella, I struggled to manage it while also trying to keep my feet from slipping on the ice.

The Look on Your Face

Priscilla Mainardi September 14, 2018 4 Comments

Priscilla Mainardi ~

Your skin pale with worry,
your mouth a straight line,
the fear in your eyes–
all this told me,
more than the nausea,
more than the fact that I couldn’t move my head,
that something was really wrong.

You thought I wouldn’t see.

I looked up at the ceiling,
at its pattern of dots,
white, and brighter white,
that could mean anything, or nothing,

Night Call

Richard Weiss May 11, 2018 7 Comments

Richard Weiss ~

At two am its insistent ring ambushes me awake.
I whisper, not wanting to disturb my wife or rouse
the dog who will whine for food, write down

the name and number before it’s jumbled, swallow
my resentment on being awakened and listen
to his story–then ask those practiced questions,

scrolling his body from one organ to another.
Tell me about the pain–what it feels like–pressure
or a vise, does it stab, sear, rip, ache, is it steady

Cushioning the Fall

Meghan G. Liroff April 27, 2018 14 Comments

Meghan G. Liroff ~

Angela Harris has been here in the hospital for six hours, awaiting the results of her CAT scan. I won’t take responsibility for all of that wait time: complicated CAT scans and labs do take a significant amount of time to perform. But she didn’t need to wait the last hour.

She was waiting on me–her emergency physician–because I needed to confirm her cancer diagnosis with radiology, arrange some oncology follow-up…and find the most appropriate phraseology for “You have stage IV cancer, but you don’t meet admission criteria.”

Walking Each Other Home

Allie Gips January 5, 2018 7 Comments

Allie Gips ~

Winter in New England and
night replaces afternoon, darkness wraps the streets while we are all still inside.
There are no windows in the Emergency Department anyway
except of course the window into this city–the stream of women with bruised arms
and orbits that they will not explain, the revolving door of opiate addicts
nodding off, crying out, praying for forgiveness, the chronic-pain patients who rip
apart all of your idealism and ambition, trade it in for a one-time hit of oxy.

Coming Up Short

Meghan G. Liroff August 25, 2017 5 Comments

Meghan G. Liroff ~

“Why so short?” says the four-year-old girl who’s here with an upper-respiratory infection.

Standing safely between her dad’s knees, she wears a bright pink jumpsuit. Her cheeks are dimpled; her hair is piled in a frizzy bun. She looks me up and down, as if trying to make sense of me.

I can’t help laughing.

It’s true, I think. At five feet even, I’m not blessed with height–but I make up for it in chutzpah. I squat down to bring my eyes level with hers.

“I’m not laughing at you,” I reassure her. “I’m just laughing because you picked up on a major thread in my life.”

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

Tag: emergency room

Bread and Butter

The Sturgeon

Acute Behavioral Crisis

He Said They Move Too Slowly

In Need of a Prayer

Flashback

The Big Chill

The Look on Your Face

Night Call

Cushioning the Fall

Walking Each Other Home

Coming Up Short

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fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

Tag: emergency room

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