It was 7 A.M. when I arrived at the hospital. The soft blue dawn surrendered to the emergency room’s fluorescent, round-the-clock glare. Reuben, the night-shift attending physician, smiled blearily.
How’d it go? I asked.
Oh, the usual. And nothing to sign out.
My turn to be thankful. But now another emergency: coffee. I was heading back to the doctors’ offices when a faint mewling began outside. Ambulance backing up. I gulped a mouthful of coffee and headed out. The ambulance bay doors hissed open. A young woman’s voice came howling in: Leave me alone! Ow . . . oh. Damn you! Leave me alone!
Bleed, I thought, though drug overdose would have been the better bet. I was working in an emergency room serving a small northeastern city. The city’s economy had crashed with the Atlantic fish stocks, and drug abuse and psychiatric problems abounded. But the worst mistake in medicine is to label patients wacky before you label them sick. And nothing makes someone delirious as shockingly fast as a hemorrhage in the brain.