by Adam Sommers
“Bern tells me to go help Pegasus and he’ll tape the scene. And I look at Peg, and he looks up at me. And he’s kind of going into full-on crazy mode.”
“ ‘The guy’s leg,’ he says. ‘I can’t find the guy’s leg.’ ”
“His leg?!” Eric gasped.
“Yeah, the guy in the car crash lost his leg. The weird thing was there was very little blood. I mean if someone loses a limb, there’s usually a LOT of blood. I look around. Bern looks around. The clock is ticking, the patient is already in the bus. Finally, Peg says to hell with it and drives off like his ass is on fire.”
Bern, that would be Bernie Talagress, was the voice from the group of cops. Now he moved over and picked up the story, “Pegasus hits me on the radio at the end of his shift and says it turns out the man’s leg was not cut off.”
“He had only one leg, right?” Eric guessed, pretty obviously.
“No,” Bern grinned. “The way the driver was sitting and the way he hit so straight-on, the leg was driven up into his body cavity through his hip. Doctor said she’d never seen anything like it.”
“Awwch!” Eric winced. “That is horrible. What a way to go.”
“Go?” asked Ollie. “What do you mean?”
“You know, die.”
“Oh,” corrected Ollie. “He’s not dead. Least he wasn’t from last night. He die overnight, Bern?”
“No,” Bernie shrugged. “At least not that I heard.”
“You mean he’s not dead?” Eric nearly jumped for joy. For sure he had a story now.
“Nah,” said Bernie, a broad-shouldered man with wire-rimmed glasses.
“Jesus.”
“Cool, huh?” said Ollie.
“Yeah,” Eric agreed, cool indeed. “You happen to know the doctor?”
“Sure, the Mercy E.R. lady. Rachael.”
“Rachael?” Eric was scribbling.
“Doctor Rachael.”
“Do you know her last name?”
“That is her last name. Dr. Rachael. She’s a big tall girl. Taller than me. Blonde.”
“Thanks,” Eric said and turned to Kathy, “Let’s get going.” Kathy was already slinging her bag over her shoulder.
“See you fellows,” Eric said sunnily. “We’re off to Mercy Medical Center to track down the Giant Dr. Rachael.”
“Ciao, boys!” Kathy waved, then as she and Eric buckled up, “You know she won’t be able to talk to you. They’re pretty persnickety about patient privacy rules.”
“Maybe,” muttered Eric as Kathy hit the gas. It was Eric’s firm belief that he could get anyone to talk about anything, privacy laws or no.
A few minutes later, they parked outside the Emergency Department directly under the sign that read: “NO PARKING. AMBULANCES ONLY. ALL OTHERS TOWED AT OWNER’S EXPENSE.”
Eric asked Kathy to hang back in the car or in the lobby, somewhere out of sight. He didn’t want anyone inside to be spooked by her bag full of cameras. Neither did he take out his reporter’s notebook. For now, he was just a guy looking for a doctor.
Despite his anxiousness, he made himself walk casually, slowly, up to the security desk inside the sliding glass doors.
“Hi,” he said to the guard. “Hoping you can help me, or at least point me in the right direction. I’m from the Standard” (by law, he had to tell him he was the press) “and I’m interested in doing a story on E.R. doctors. Someone told me there’s a Dr. Rachael here who has quite a good reputation.”
The guard looked at Eric skeptically. He was trained to think of anyone and everyone as a potential threat. “I hear she’s quite tall and not bad looking. That helps my story,” Eric grinned man to man. “I mean, of course, if she’s up for it. Willing.”
“The press is supposed to call first. Go through the media office and proper channels,” the guard grumped.
“I know, and I apologize for that,” Eric purred. If he’d been a wolf in a pack he’d have rolled over and exposed his belly to the alpha. “I’m sort of old school in that way. I like to actually see who I’m talking to. Besides, it’s a long-term thing and I’m here on something else so I figured I’d give it a try.”
The guard made a face.
“Look,” Eric said. “I mean, I’m sure she’s not the only E.R. doctor in the hospital and there’s other hospitals in the city, so if she tells me to piss off, I’ll piss off. At least let me ask. What’s the harm?”
The guard, if only to get rid of the gnat-like presence of Eric Berger, punched a number into the phone. “Dr. Rachael, please?”
Pause.
“Hi, Doctor. It’s the front desk. There’s a newspaper reporter here. He’s asking if he can see you.”
Pause.
“I’m not sure. He says it’s about emergency room doctors. You want to talk to him for a second? I can give him the phone.”
He handed the receiver to Eric, “Hi, Doctor, I know it’s an intrusion, and I’m sorry. I’m just looking for a couple of people to focus a feature story on.”
Pause.
“Like five minutes. Just to say hello, let you know where we’re going. We would not write anything for several weeks yet.”
Pause.
“Of course.”
Pause.
“Terrific. I’ll wait out here.”
Eric fiddled with his fingers and looked at the TV, where some daytime soap was playing. The minutes ticked by and he wondered if the doctor had had second thoughts. People came to the guard, they left. More people came. Then left. Some fifteen minutes later, Eric looked up and his jaw nearly hit the floor.
The cop Menendez had said she was tall, but even so, Eric was not fully prepared. Dr. Rachael had to be six-feet-six and was thin as a ruler. Her face, when you looked all the way up and found it, was neither pretty nor ugly, and notable only because it seemed so serene. That was a little weird, considering she was supposed to be hip-deep in medical emergencies.
The waiting room was nearly empty, and she sort of floated her big body over to one of the neutral-colored couches, motioning for him to follow. The security guy kept a close eye on the goings-on in case Eric turned out to be some kind of a wack job. But the guard, whose name was Peters, according to his nametag, never entertained any notions of heroics. He was there simply to call 911 if anything bad happened. At eleven-fifty an hour, he was not earning anywhere near risk-your-life-money.
Eric had told the guard a lie with the purpose of getting to talk to the doctor. He had not counted on the guard retelling the lie to the doctor. Now, Eric Berger was going to have to finesse that story just a bit. “I’m looking to do a story about E.R. doctors and the unusual cases they have seen.”
She looked down, the universal gesture of “Sorry, I can’t help you.”
But Eric pressed on. “I know the Hippocratic Oath prevents you from telling me anything about a specific case, but if I don’t use anyone’s names, I think that might be okay?”
“It’s not the Hippocratic Oath, it’s patient confidentiality laws,” the doctor corrected in a surprisingly high voice for someone her size. “Hippocratic Oath is about first doing no harm and treating all patients with the same level of care. Your best level of care. It’s not the same as the federal laws about privacy. I’m not even supposed to go near anyone interested in patient records.”
“Oh, I see,” Eric murmured. “I didn’t know that. Thank you. I’m not looking to get anyone in trouble.” He was about to go, then decided he had nothing to lose. “Listen, Dr. Rachael, we do want to do a feature on E.R. doctors, but I’m here because I generally cover the police and they told me this crazy story about a man who had his leg pushed into his body cavity last night in a bad car crash. So I told them, no, that’s just baloney. We went back and forth, and they said if I didn’t believe them to come here and ask for you.”
The doctor sm
iled. Now his visit made some sense.
“So are these cops just making a jerk out of the new guy on the beat, or is this the craziest case in medical history?”
Still smiling, she said, “Do you mind if I call my media relations director?”
“Not at all,” said Eric, now positive of two things. First, that the doctor definitely wanted to talk about the case; and second, that the media guy would toss him out on his butt. That was his job.
They waited only a couple of minutes before a man in a suit showed up and introduced himself as something Eric didn’t catch. When Eric Berger explained the reason for his visit, the suit raised an eyebrow then pursed his lips, as if first saying to himself “no freaking way,” then “Actually, can’t see why not.” In a couple of seconds he sort of shrugged and said, “It’s probably all right.”
“Really?” Eric gasped.
“As long as we agree to the ground rules. No names, nothing to identify the patient. And don’t do a hatchet job.”
“No, I’m here to make you all look good. I just want to know what happened.”
The doctor looked at the suit, and he nodded back.
“Well,” she began, “when the EMTs brought him in, he seemed like he wasn’t in terrible shape for such a violent crash. His face, his head, his upper extremities seemed to be not only intact, but largely unaffected. Internally, there was extensive damage and his vital signs were poor.”
Eric took out his notebook and started jotting down quotes: Little blood. Poor vitals. Ex. int. dam.”
“Of course, we noticed the loss of his right leg but there did not seem to be a tear; rather, it looked like a concave depression about six centimeters deep at the bottom of his hip. When I felt his abdomen, I could feel the long bones of his leg.”
Eric scribbled, then thought out loud, “But if the leg went up into his body cavity, wouldn’t it, I don’t know, maybe pop out the top, near his shoulder? Something?”
“It might. There’s really very little case work on such an incident. But what happened to this patient is this part of his leg,” and she reached down to touch Eric’s calf, “somehow got folded under the thigh as the deceleration began.”
“You mean when he crashed,” Eric interrupted, trying to put it into English.
“Yes, at the onset of the impact,” the doctor allowed. “Either that, or he was already sitting with the leg folded under him. We have patients with back issues who find that is less painful for short distances.”
Eric didn’t ask the obvious question about whether the patient might have been so drunk that he sat any which way in the car. Instead, he indicated with a nod that she should continue.
“In any case, both parts of his leg were pushed into the abdominal cavity together, next to each other.”
“Ach.” Eric couldn’t help himself. “That’s disgusting.”
“Unusual,” the doctor said, absorbing the layman’s reaction to a medical situation.
“And he’s definitely not dead?” Eric continued. “You’re sure? Kind of ruins my story if he is.” This little bit of levity had its desired effect, eliciting a small smile from the giant doctor.
“Quite alive,” Dr. Rachael assured. “Amazingly, not one of his internal organs was damaged beyond repair. Kidney, liver, lungs—well, one lung—pancreas all bruised and or torn, but our internists are optimistic.”
Eric’s mouth went dry.
The doctor continued. It was one of the more consistent phenomena Eric had witnessed as a reporter. People often don’t want to talk to you at first, but if you can break that initial resistance, a lot of times they not only start answering your questions, you can’t get them to shut up.
“Of course, the right hip socket was completely destroyed,” the doctor continued. “But the leg itself was not in terrible shape.”
“The leg,” Eric began. “You…” He didn’t quite know how to say the thing he wanted to say. It sounded like something you’d see on a cartoon.
“Yes?”
“You, uh, got the leg?” Eric tried.
“Yes, we were able to extract it.”
“Extract?” Eric was hit with a wave of nausea.
“Once we got the scans and saw how difficult it would be to get the extremity through any sort of thoracic or abdominal surgery, ortho had the idea of extraction.”
“Extraction?”
“Yes, pulling it out, in common terms.”
“I know what extraction is. I’m just wondering, uh, how. It’s quite a bit bigger than a molar.”
She giggled again. “Ortho got the biggest bone clamp they had, we probed the hip socket, and were able to get an attachment. Dr. Farnblatt braced the patient, and I pulled the handle. It has a feature where the clamp tightens as you pull.”
“And the leg?”
“It slid out.”
Eric turned pale and thought he’d vomit on the spot. He fought down the bile and asked, “What, uh… happens now, with the patient?”
“He’s stable.”
“No, I mean, you know, the leg?” Eric felt like he could not stop saying the phrase “the leg.”
Behind the doctor, Eric saw a couple come in. Middle-aged, Hispanic, traumatized. He figured something was wrong with the woman because she was doubled over and barely able to walk. It seemed certain the doctor would have to hurry over and treat her. That was fine. He’d gotten way more than he could have hoped for and enough to take to John Williams for a story.
As the couple approached, the doctor was telling Eric, “The leg’s ligaments are torn, some of the nerves are damaged, but there is a chance it could be saved.”
“Saved!” cried the Hispanic woman who had crept quite close. “My Julio’s leg can be saved!”
The doctor turned. “Oh, Mr. and Mrs. Nieto. I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there.”
Then the man spoke up. “His leg can be okay, you said? I heard.”
Clearly, the doctor was uncomfortable talking about it with Eric right there.
He gave her his best “I swear I won’t write or say anything about this” face, but the serene Dr. Rachael suggested to the couple, “We should talk in private.”
“No,” the woman threw herself at the doctor who was probably twice her height. “Tell me. Can Julio walk again? He is a soccer player. He has to walk, to run.”
Dr. Rachael gave up with a shrug. “It is possible, Mrs. Nieto, only possible, that it can be reattached successfully. If I had to say, maybe ten percent or twenty percent chance. Normal function, I don’t think, is realistic.”
Then the woman broke down in sobs. “Julio. Ohooo, Julio!”
The man, too, was upset, but in a public place he would not shed tears.
Eric took advantage of the moment to introduce himself. “Hi, Mr. Nieto. My name is Eric. I’m from the newspaper. I’m doing a story on what happened.” He shook the man’s hand.
“Calypso.”
“You said he is a soccer player?”
“Si. Yes. He was a star in Honduras.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry for what happened. He’s in really good hands here. The doctors are amazing. If anyone can make him better, it’s these people here.” He nodded to Dr. Rachael, who was aware she was being buttered up, but liked it anyway.
“If it is okay with you, I’d like to put Julio’s story in the newspaper.”
The husband and wife looked at each other. “Is it for money?” asked the wife.
“No,” Eric answered. “We can’t pay you. But we can ask readers to make a contribution to help with the bills.”
“Oh, that would be good if you could do that.”
“We can.”
The doctor’s face didn’t change but her body language was clear. She didn’t like it.
“Can I ask you a few questions about Julio?”
“Okay.”
“What team did he play for?”
“The Lions. Los Leons in Puerta Cortes.”
“I bet he was great. Is great,” Eric quickly corrected.
“Yes. The most popular player. The whole town loves him.”
“Was he visiting?”
“No, he was here for school.”
“Oh, studying.”
“Yes, to be a therapist. He says, ‘Mama, when I get old I can’t play soccer anymore. I have to do something. I will help young people to deal with their problems.’ ”
“Sounds like a smart and good man.”
“Si, si, si, si,” she cried.
“When did you find out what happened here?”
“I don’t know anything. The phone rings, come to the hospital. He has two daughters back home. How am I going to tell them?”
“Mrs. Nieto, I don’t know. It is a terrible thing to have to go through. But you can tell them he is still alive. He is going to still be alive. The doctors say he’s kind of a miracle man to survive this kind of an accident. Maybe God is watching out for him. Maybe God will keep watching.”
“They’re my baby granddaughters!” she wailed.
“Do you have a photo of them?”
“Of course.” She pulled one out of her purse, took one look and burst into tears.
“Oh, they’re so pretty.”
They talked some more with the doctor sitting nearby. Then Eric asked, “Have you seen Julio yet?”
“After he came out of the operation this morning.”
“Was he able to talk?”
The doctor interrupted. “He’s intubated. He won’t be able to talk for some time.”
“I see. I’m sorry. I should have known,” Eric Berger kicked himself mentally.
“He squeezed my hand,” said Calypso, the father. There was a hint of pride in that. Even in such a state, his son was strong enough to respond.
“I told him I love him,’’ said the mom, tears spilling down her cheeks.
“Wow,” said Eric. “That’s beautiful.”