So back to the part where I said there were only 5 patients in the ICU. We normally should have 13 dying people dammit, but I’ll settle for a couple. Means I can have more coffee breaks I guess.

So after restraining myself from force feeding a hypoglycemic man cream of wheat, I was caught by a nurse and asked if I could run an extra orange juice into a room.  As this is a task that I’m in no way overqualified for, I happily agree and find a fridge with orange juice in it to bring to her room. The orange juice, not the fridge. 

So I get in the room and hand the OJ to a beautiful 50 year woman who looked thrilled to be getting a beverage. As I unwrapped the straw, she asked, “How is the lady from last night doing?” And I’m like, “Oh, who?, I can find out for you,” thinking she was talking about another ICU patient. She’s like, “Well, she was trying to fix something under the house. I don’t know why she was trying to fix something in her condition, but she can be obstinate sometimes so I guess she’ll do what she wants.”

And I’m following so far.

“So she goes under there to fix the whatever she’s trying to fix and she brings her kid down there with her, and I didn’t think it was a good idea, but who am I to say. So she goes down there and then she’s stuck and I just got so so so scared.” And I could tell. This lady was so so worried.  “I just want to find out if the woman is ok. I was so scared with her down there with her child and being all covered in bugs. Covered in bugs and stuck, how awful.”

“I had to run across the street to get help. I broke a window to try to get someone to help me. I didn’t have time to put any clothes on before I ran to get help. And when my neighbor finally let me call the fire department and they came, all they wanted to do was talk about me. They wouldn’t listen to me about the pregnant lady stuck under my house. So…I just want to know…Is She OK?”

Now, I was all with her and concerned up until about halfway through the story. But then was all smarted up in the end. Pregnant ladies under houses don’t get covered in bugs, this is California after all. We don’t have bugs here.  

But this lady is legitimately concerned. And I’ve been there before, being hyper paranoid about dumb shit. First time I smoked weed, I thought that the entire party was just trying to take pictures of me. Like that was the ENTIRE purpose of them inviting me was to get me fucked up and then take pictures. It may be a delusion, but it is non the less really really REAL to the person experiencing the delusion.

I assured her by saying, “Hey, I know some firemen (which I don’t). And they are REALLY good at their jobs. If you called the firemen, they have no doubt found whoever was under your house. Firemen and paramedics are the kind of people who are exceptionally good at their jobs.”

She liked this. She believed in my belief in the integrity of firemen.

Turns out since we didn’t have very many dying people,we had some overflow from psych.  But this I hadn’t known until now. And maybe 15% of me was thinking, what if there really is a stuck pregnant lady under a house in Van Nuys, CA who was RIGHT NOW covered in bugs.  So I had to sneak a peek at her chart which assured me with the letters ALOC. Which my iPhone says means “Altered Level of Consciousness.”  Breathing a sigh of relief, I was able to move onto more productive things such as punching holes in paper.  (3 hole punching – this is no joke).

Later the lady’s husband came in and gave the run down on her situation. Basically, she had not been taking her anti-depressant/bipolar medication for the last three days and had been declining until the seizure and ALOC that had brought her into the hospital. Supposedly the story goes that she liked to use her medications early on in the month to get high and then would run out of medications by the end of the month.  She had had a history of severe mental and physical abuse at the hands of her parents, and she and her sister had never been the same. Either nurture or nature, she was fucked.

Basically, the husband really cared a lot and was trying to convince the doctor to let HIM handle his wife’s medications because he thought it was silly that his addict wife should have access to her own addict medication.  Makes sense up front, but you could tell the doc was suspicious regardless. Nobody knows who to trust. Everyone wants to just do what’s right.

After the discussion of the husband with the doctor, the husband steps in the room, and the red headed lady says, “Are they gonna be ok??” And the husband says, “Yeah, they alright, see you later sweetie, get better.”