Friday Night Knife and Gun Club

by Linda Collison

  *

  It’s just after one A.M. and Tonto has a fresh pot of coffee brewing in the lounge. When he makes the coffee it always smells a little like burning sage and I swear I can feel my spirit being cleansed. So far Cid’s patient is hanging in there. I got Shanna’s pain under control, called the resident to get an order for a PCA pump – why the hell she didn’t come out of OR with one is beyond me. Anyway, she’s sleeping now, and everything looks good. Mama’s sleeping too, sitting in the chair, her drooling face on Shanna’s bed just like I found her when I first came in the room. I drape a warm blanket across her back, it’s the least I can do. Hang Shanna’s midnight antibiotics, check her dressings, her wound drains, measure her urine output, check it for blood. Everything looks good -- for now. Wash my hands and go next door to spend some time with Mr. Sobee. Outside the snow is coming down sideways, the wind sings a lullaby and I wish I could curl up on the bed beside him.

  Cid asks me to keep an eye on her patients while she goes to the nurses’ lounge (funny word, because when do we get to lounge?) to phone home.

  “I texted John to let him know I made it in alright but he likes to hear my voice. He always likes to say goodnight.” She smiles and I feel a rush of envy.

  Later on, Cid returns the favor. My work is caught up and my patients are stable so I’m going to take a short break. I’m going to go down and get a snack from the machines then stop by the ED to see if Dillon is working tonight. Dillon and I used to date, way back when. We’re still friends. We still get together every so often, for old time’s sake. I don’t know what happened, there was just something missing, maybe it was me.

  The cafeteria is closed at night. We’re told it costs too much to keep it open twenty-four seven. Apparently the night shift doesn’t need hot food. We’re a breed who exists on leftover pizza, Doritos, Chinese take-out, candy bars, whatever. Here’s proof. I feed two dollars into the machine, push the button and wait for my Twinkies to drop down. Eat them both standing up, one right after the other. Mmmmm, love that airy texture of the golden sponge cake, that creamy filling caressing my tongue. A cup of caffeine to chase it, maybe a quick cigarette and I’ll be good to go the rest of the night.

  Walking down the hall, I check on the kids using the iCam app on my phone. Both of them are zonked out. They’re in Wyatt’s room; they sleep together when I’m not home. Calamity’s afraid to sleep in her own bed. She still sleeps with me on nights I’m home. Maybe I’ll be able to get off night shift one of these days, and have a normal life.

  Down on the ground floor the Emergency Department is ripping, they are in full combat mode, it’s the Friday Night Knife and Gun Club with the usual shootings and stabbings, mostly between family members and friends, or drug deals gone bad. You’d think people could just get along, it’s so much easier. But I know it’s not that easy. I once had a gun, my own gun, held to my head by a man who said he loved me more than life itself. My ex. Lucky me, the cops came with superior weaponry and somehow I still have a head. Somehow, they talked him down. I didn’t become a statistic, one of those family murder-suicides that everybody just shakes their heads over. Maybe my angel of mercy was on duty that day. But let’s not go there; tonight is not the night to think about that.

  The shelters must all be full tonight. They’re working up a couple of homeless people with chest pain brought in by ambulance. Chest pain always buys you a few hours out of the cold on a hospital gurney -- which is a hell of a lot more comfortable than a cardboard box in two feet of snow. And there’s the usual assortment of abdominal pains, psychiatric cases, colicky babies, and gomes from the home – that’s our code word for nursing home patients. The waiting room is overflowing with walk-ins, it’s like an Irish wake in there, only there are more Mexicans than Irish in this town.

  Dillon gives me the overview; we’re having a cup of coffee in the ED lounge, a dreary, windowless cubby hole that smells like a wet dog on a night like this.

  “How’s your shift going, Babe?” He still calls me that, it’s vaguely irritating. Before I can answer his cell phone rings, he’s listening. “Shit, two ambulances five minutes out, they’re bringing us a whole family with CO poisoning.”

  “’Tis the season.”

  “Sorry, I gotta go.” Dillon slams his coffee and starts for the door. “Hey Babe, wanna do breakfast in the morning?”

  “I can’t. The kids.”

  “Still haven’t found a night sitter?”

  I shake my head.

  “Too bad. Hey, call me sometime. When you’re free.”

  “Yeah, right. Maybe when Calamity turns eighteen?” I look at my watch, I’ve already been gone fifteen minutes. I check my patients’ heart rhythms using the app on my phone. Looking good, but I need get back upstairs, I’ve got to give two units of blood to Shanna, run a cardiac index on Sobee, and catch up on charting. Dillon is already gone, he’s getting ready for the new arrivals, he’s notifying the hyperbaric team. Time for a two-minute nicotine break, then back to work. My coat is up in my locker, I borrow Dillon’s, he left it draped over the back of the chair.

  Stand outside on the ramp with a few other smokers, we’re huddled around the butt can like hobos around a campfire. Technically, we’re not supposed to smoke on the ambulance ramp but it’s late at night, who cares? Nobody says much, we’re just filling our lungs as fast as we can, we’re stamping our feet to keep our toes from freezing. A gust of wind whips around the corner pelting us with crystals of stinging snow and we instinctively turn our backs to it, like cattle in a snowstorm, sheltering our cancer sticks. My God it’s cold but the nicotine rush is worth it. Oh, here come the ambulances with the carbon monoxide victims, their blinking lights like lassos twirling. I inhale one last hit before going back inside.

  Walking down the hall I pass Paul, one of the technicians, rolling a supply of portable oxygen tanks to the Emergency Department. At night the techs are runners, they go all over the hospital, to Central Supply, to the Laundry, to the morgue. In the old days Paul was an orderly, but there are no more orderlies, there are no more aides; there are patient care assistants and medical technicians. They’re still paid shit but they have better titles. Nobody complains. These days we’re all glad to have a job.

  “Hey Paul, how’s it going?” He looks like a heart attack waiting to happen. Overweight, but I don’t know how -- he must walk thirty miles a night just doing his job. Probably eats too much supersize with fries. Well, when you make beans and you have no chance of ever making much more than a hill of beans, the only pleasure you can afford is the feel-good rush that comes from a huge carb load, that secret sauce and those greasy, salty fries. Plop your fat ass on the couch after work, turn on cable TV and get fucked up on a six-pack of cheap beer. Because you’ll never be able to save enough to make a difference, so might as well go down numb.

  “It’s going, it’s going,” Paul says. Just like he says every night. “Just not going fast enough.” He laughs at his sad little joke. Just like he does every night.