Fumbled

by Harry Brady

  “We live here we will just look in and say goodnight to our friend.”

  This time looking up from his phone he said, “Lady, I told you visiting hours are over for today. Try again tomorrow.”

  Damien and Millie turned and started walking back toward the residents’ hallway. Halfway there Damien said to Millie “I saw her file in the chart rack. She is in room 365 we can look in on our way back to our apartments.”

  Walking back down the hall Damien asked Millie if she knew the man at the nurses’ desk. Millie said, ”He has been here for a few months and his name is Raymond. He is the night orderly and he never is very friendly. Stopping at room 365 Damien started to open the door to let Millie enter. Just then Raymond came running down the hallway and got in front of Millie pushed her back from the entry way.

  “I told you no visitors and that means no visitors” he snarled at her.

  At this point Damien grabbed Raymond by his shirt and pinned him against the wall and said, “Where are your manners? If you ever touch that lady again I`ll break you in two! Millie, why don`t you go in and say goodnight to Rita for both of us”.

  Millie entered the room and a few seconds later she came out screaming “Damien, It`s Rita. She`s not breathing!”

  Releasing his grip on the shirt he let Raymond slip down the wall to the floor.

  Rushing into room 365 Damien saw a motionless Rita curled up in a ball. She was not breathing and her lips and fingernails were turning blue.

  Damien had seen this situation before on the streets of the lower Northside and immediately recognized an opioid overdose. “We need Narcan and we need it NOW!” he said to a frightened Millie.

  Rushing out the door he grabbed Raymond again by the shirt and dragged him to the nurses’ station.

  Pulling Raymond`s shirt until they were inches apart he said, “Get the key to the narcotic cabinet and open it now”

  Raymond snarled back “I ain’t got no key and the head nurse ain’t here.”

  Tightening his grip Damien demanded “Where is she?”

  “She`s over in the memory unit and won`t be back for twenty minutes.”

  At this point Damien flung Raymond against the counter with a corresponding crack of several ribs.

  Grabbing the door of the medicine cabinet Damien used all his strength and fury to tear the door from its hinges and reached in and grabbed the antidote. Running back to room 365 he burst in where Rita still laid motionless. Millie was at the bedside slapping Rita`s hand and calling her name loudly in a vain in an attempt to revive her. Millie stepped aside and Damien rolled up Rita`s sleeve and took the preloaded syringe and setting the needle and syringe in place injected the Narcan into Rita`s left triceps muscle. He then joined Millie who had begun reciting the Hail Mary.

  A few minutes later Rita`s eyes fluttered and she rolled over on her back and asked, “What are you and Damien doing here? It`s after visiting hours.”

  Chapter

  7

  It looks like a quiet night, Jeannie Edwards thought to herself as she left the memory care unit. All the meds had been given and the only problem was Mrs. Ellis looking in the linen closet for her cat, Gizmo. All that took was assuring Mrs. Ellis that Gizmo would show up in the morning and giving her an Ambien to help her get to sleep. Silently moving down the hallway she relaxed as she thought of her cappuccino waiting back at the nursing station on Three South. Being the night supervisor in a retirement community was a much less stressful job than the 18 years she had spent as an emergency room nurse at Mercy Hospital in downtown Pittsburgh. No more gunshot wounds, stabbings, drunks, overdoses, or other unsavory things that were a nightly occurrence. She didn`t have to deal with the chaos of multiple severe injuries from automobile accidents on the highways. Then she relived her emotional strain when she recalled the night four college boys were brought into the emergency room after the car they had been riding in was hit head on by a tractor trailer traveling at high speed on a two way black top. Two of the boys were so badly injured that they were dead on arrival. A third boy was barely breathing and despite the heroic efforts of the emergency team he died within the hour. Jeannie was there when the parents arrived to receive the awful news. In her mind she knew that it would a night she would never be able to forget. The fourth boy miraculously survived with multiple orthopedic injuries. Coming back to the present she thought the only stress here at Holy Angels had been those three sudden deaths during the last two months. There had been no autopsies, so the official cause of death was recorded as cardiac failure even though there was no solid evidence to support that diagnosis. As a matter of fact the doctor who signed the death certificate was covering for the house doctor and had never actually seen the patients. Well, we are getting into the holiday season she thought so all is calm and all is bright and all I want is my coffee tonight. Opening the heavy wooden door to the skilled nursing unit her first sight was that of Raymond slumped against the counter in the nursing station. He was holding both arms against his chest and appeared to be in a great deal of pain. “Raymond, what in the world are you doing there!”

  “It`s not my fault!! It`s him that giant. He hurt me!! Then he stole the medicine. I ain’t gonna take it!!

  “Raymond slow down. What giant and what medicine?”

  “It`s that football player and that know it all woman he pals around with. They stole the narcotics!”

  Wincing in pain Raymond braced himself against the counter with his right arm tried to stand up. Yowling in pain he yelled at Jeannie, “That son of a bitch broke my ribs. I ain’t gonna take it.”

  Jeannie turned to look at the narcotics cabinet and gasped in disbelief. Vials of drugs and syringes were scattered about the cabinet and several bottles had fallen on the floor. She tried to process what she was dealing with when the door to room 365 opened and Millie stepped out and walked up to the nurses station.

  A confused Jeannie asked, “Millie, do you have any idea of what`s going on?”

  “Rita overdosed on a narcotic and Damien saved her,” was Millie`s calm reply.

  Getting right in Millie`s face Raymond screamed, “That`s bullshit!! That`s bullshit!! He stole the narcotics and broke my ribs.”

  Just then Damien stepped through the door of room 365 and saw Raymond threatening Millie again. He grabbed Raymond by his scrub shirt and slammed against the opposite wall. Wailing in pain Raymond crumpled to the floor and curled into the fetal position.

  Millie stepped in front of Damien, who was now bending over the crumpled Raymond. “Damien stop!!! She ordered. “Why don`t you go wait in your apartment. I`ll be right there.”

  “What about him?” Damien asked pointing to Raymond.

  “In his condition, he isn`t going to hurt anyone. Now please go to your room.”

  Damien looked at Millie with the expression of a twelve year old who had just broken the family heirloom vase and obediently left for his apartment.

  Jeannie had thought that she had seen just about everything from her emergency room experiences, but this was getting out of hand. Her first instinct was always her patient’s wellbeing. Rushing into the room, she saw the bedside table pushed to the side and a spilled water pitcher on the floor. Going over to the bed she looked at the patient who appeared to be perfectly comfortable and asked “Mrs. Bailey, are you O.K.?”

  Rita Bailey now alert and lucid said, “I feel fine. What is all the commotion about in the hallway?”

  Checking her pulse Jeanie said, “I`ll tell you about it later.” Satisfied with a strong pulse, Jeannie put a blood pressure cuff on Rita`s left arm and felt comfortable with a 137/75 reading. Jeannie handed Rita the call button and told her, “I`ll check back with you in a little while. If you need anything, just push the button. ”

  Turning to Millie, who had followed her into the room she said, “Let`s go to the nurses station. I need to call security while you tell me what
is going on.” After they left the room Jeannie called security and said they had an emergency and needed someone right away.

  Raymond was getting into a sitting position, as they arrived back at the nurses’ station. Going over to him, Jeannie helped him stand and said, “Come with me to the exam room and let me check you out. From what you said we may need to get a chest x-ray.” As Jeannie helped Raymond to the exam room she glanced back at the dismembered narcotic cabinet. “And I thought this was going to be a quiet night.” she said to Millie.

  Millie reassured her with, “I will explain everything after you deal with security and check Raymond out.”

  After evaluating Raymond`s injuries, Jeannie was satisfied that he was stable. She returned to the nurses’ station, where she and Millie waited for security to arrive. During this time, Millie gave Jeannie a narrative of the incident.

  After about twenty minutes, the security guard arrived with an apology that the lady in apartment 220 had accidentally pulled the panic cord in her bathroom and he was responding to that when he got the call to the health center.

  Jeannie politely accepted the apology and asked him to call a cab for Raymond and send him to Mercy Hospital for chest x-rays. When security had left, Jeannie explained to Millie that she would have to do an inventory of the drug cabinet to determine what had been stolen and she needed to secure the remaining drugs. She then asked Millie to stay at the nurses’ station while she checked in on Rita first. When she returned to the nurses’ station satisfied with her patient’s wellbeing Millie asked her if she could be of any help. Jeannie responded, “I`ve got some coffee brewing. Let`s take five, and then you can help me check what`s left in the drug cabinet.” The inventory disclosed that the only missing drug was the Narcan, and the empty syringe that had been recovered from Rita`s room. The next step was to place all the drugs back in the cabinet, tape the door back on, and sealing it as best they could with duct tape until the morning. After Millie left, Jeannie sat down to write an incident report and thought maybe emergency room duty wasn`t so bad after all.

  Chapter

  8

  Emergency Room Mercy Hospital - November 26-27, 2018

  While sitting in the examining room waiting for the cab to arrive to take him to Mercy Hospital, Raymond could feel it starting again. The searchlight coming at him then the red, blue, and yellow lightning bolts started whether he had his eyes open or closed. By the time the cab arrived at the emergency room entrance, his head was throbbing and he felt like vomiting. He got out of the cab and handed the driver the voucher the security guard had provided him. Wincing from the pain, he entered through the sliding doors and walked up to the reception desk. A young man asked if he could help him, and Raymond said that some SOB had just broken his ribs and the nurse at Holy Angels sent him to the hospital to get an x-ray. The young man handed Raymond a clip board and a pen and asked him to fill out a medical history form. He directed him to take a seat in the waiting area. Raymond walked into the room and looked around. In one corner was a woman with a small child wrapped in a pink knitted blanket that she was gently rocking the child back and forth. In another corner, he saw a man his head back against a wall and apparently asleep. In the center of the room stood a circular table which was covered with old magazines and several half emptied Styrofoam cups. Raymond decided on a chair as far away from the other people as he could. He eased himself down while cursing at the pain under his breath. After a few minutes, the woman with the baby was called in by an attendant. The questionnaire was three pages long and the first line asked for his full name. Raymond put down his new name that he had assumed since leaving Louisiana, Raymond Benson.

  The forms asked several questions that he did not understand. When he got to the part on family medical history, he almost laughed at the question of whether or not his mother or grandmother had a history of diabetes. Then his anger welled up again as he thought, what difference did it make because his mother was a whore and she died from a drug overdose and Granny had been blown away by his double gauge shotgun. His bile grew worse with the next question about his father`s medical history. Hell! He never knew who that bastard was!!

  At this point, he threw the pen on the table and answered no more of the damn questions. After another short wait, Raymond was called in by the same attendant he had seen previously and taken to another room where he gave his Holy Angels insurance card. After all the pertinent information had been recorded he was escorted through a hallway past several examining cubicles some of which had curtains drawn. Doctors and nurses were scurrying in and out of the cubicles. A uniformed police officer was apparently standing guard by another cubicle. Crying, cursing and prayers were the sounds he heard as he was led back to an examining room. It took about five hours until Raymond walked out of the hospital and got in the cab to take him to his place of residence. On the ride there, he grumbled to himself about how it took five hours to tell him that he had broken ribs. He told them that when he first got there. Then, they said there wasn`t anything to do, but let it heal on its own over four to six weeks. However, the best part was they gave him a prescription for OxyContin. He was to take it three times a day for six weeks. That`s 126 pills he read on the prescription form. Then he thought I`m gonna make me some money out of this.

  When he arrived back at the rooming house on Lockhart Street where he was living, he went up to his “apartment” as the owner of the property called it. Going up to the second floor he went into his apartment and collapsed on a moldy overstuffed sofa. After a minute or two, he slouched back further into the overstuffed sofa and his fog began to clear and his senses sharpened. Even with the OxyContin from the emergency room visit, his ribs still hurt like hell. Putting his head into one of the pillows he was almost overwhelmed by the smell of vomit, urine and sweat that reeked from it. His mind was racing. I ain’t gonna take it from that big ape. He`s gonna go down! I ain’t gonna take it any more from nobody.

  As the fog continued to clear he realized that he hadn`t eaten since yesterday afternoon. Pushing himself up wincing and cursing he went to the kitchen counter where he looked for something to eat. Seeing some Taco Bell bags, he looked for any leftovers and all he accomplished was to disturb several roaches that scurried off to the safety behind some empty beer cans.

  Falling back onto the couch he began to plot his revenge. One more of those old whiny bitches from the home are gonna go, and Mr. Skrzz, whatever the hell his name, is will go with them. He opened the bottle of OxyContin took one out even though he wasn`t due for one for another four hours and swallowed it with the next to last swig of Seagrams left on the table. He closed his eyes and went into a fitful sleep. When he awoke it, was daylight out and he had to use the toilet. He got up and opened the apartment door and walked down the hall to the communal bathroom. The door was locked. It was in use. He banged on the door and growled “Hurry up. I gotta go real bad.”

  “O.K. O.K. give me a minute!” came a female voice.

  Raymond danced up and down the hall for a few moments until he heard the lock open and a middle aged woman in curlers and a wearing a dirty yellow bathrobe exited and giving him a dirty look she turned and walked away down the hall without saying a word. Feeling relieved after using the facility he returned to his room. He finished the last of the Seagrams on the table put on his jacket and headed out to Taco Bell.

  Chapter

  9

  The Executive Director`s Office - The Next Morning

  It was a bright cold December morning with a few scattered snowflakes falling as Detective LaKeisha Johnson from the narcotics unit pulled into the parking lot at Holy Angels Retirement Community. She had never been there before and was impressed how neat the grounds looked even in winter. There were two buildings each of which was three stories of the red brick construction, so common in the Pittsburgh area. She pulled the black Ford Crown Victoria into one of the visitors’ parking spaces and got out. Walking toward the f
ront entrance she observed two life size concrete Holy Angels standing guard on either side of the front entrance. Upon entering she asked a cheerful elderly lady at the reception desk for directions to the Executive Director`s office. As directed, she walked down the hallway to the right. Looking for office 110, she noticed some workers were taking turkeys and pilgrims cutouts off the office doors and were replacing them with Rudolphs and Santas. She thought that may be rushing the season, but it may help cheer up some of the lonely residents. Nearing the end of the hallway she reached a door that read Marilynn Cassidy, MPH, Executive Director. Underneath this were the words, Please Come In. Detective Johnson knocked gently and opened the door.

  Upon entering, she was greeted by a trim middle aged woman with slightly graying blond hair put up in a neat bun. She was dressed in a navy blue business suit and white blouse. On the suit jacket was a name tag that read, Marilyn.

  Marilyn Cassidy turned off her computer and stepped from behind her desk extended her hand and said, “Welcome to Holy Angels, Detective Johnson. Thank you for coming to our community.”

  Taking her hand Detective Johnson responded, “It sounds like Holy Angels had an exciting time last night. Since there was a question of a drug overdose and narcotic cabinet broken into, it fell into my area. Maybe you can clear up some of the confusion.”

  Turning toward an attractive mature woman in a nurses uniform, she introduced Jeannie Edwards to the detective. “Our night nursing supervisor in the care center, Mrs. Edwards, has agreed to stay to talk with you, Detective Johnson. Would either of you like some coffee?”

  “No, thank you.” LaKeisha Johnson responded. Jeannie Edwards said, “I`m all caffeined up from last night and don`t need any more, Marilyn.”

  “O.K. Let`s sit down and sort things out,” Marilyn said as she gestured toward two chairs in front of her desk.