Chapter 13: When I Was a New Nurse.

Old nurses get crusty. At this point in my life I am like a baguette, I’m so crusty. We have seen so much that almost nothing shocks us like it used to. When I look back on my time as a new graduate nurse it is hard to remember all the crazy things that happened. I can still recall a few.

When I first started in the ER as a nurse with 2 years of experience I might as well have been a new graduate. I was certainly as green as they come.

We had a doctor who was infamous throughout the hospital. He was not an ER physician but a general practitioner. I had never worked with him before.

He came to the ER to sew up a prisoner from the jail who had been in an “altercation”. He was the physician for the county jail at that time.

He looked exactly like Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame. From his portly stature to his handlebar mustache, which he always kept waxed, to his three piece suit complete with a pocket watch and fob. He was a rather well known character to everyone at the hospital except the New Nurse.

It wasn’t my first day on the job but certainly in the first weeks of my assignment there. He realized I was the “New Nurse”. He sent me to look for a special needle holder/scissors that was all one piece. He told me he had lost it in the ER and really needed to find it as it was one of kind. When suturing you didn’t have to switch back and forth between the two instruments.

I dutifully started searching in every cabinet and drawer for the item he needed. After about a half hour of searching I was let in on a little secret by my preceptor. It seems the item had been missing for several years. Every time Dr. “Colonel Sanders” spied a new nurse he sent them looking for it. It is kind of like an initiation.

He overheard my preceptor and he smiled, twisting his mustache, making it cringeworthy. “One of these days one of you are going to find that needle holder for me.”

I was never tested with this one but… It is not uncommon for the doctor to send a new nurse or resident looking for the Otis Elevators. Thinking this is a medical tool, they hadn’t been told about in school they go about in a flurry, searching for, and asking everyone where to find the Otis Elevators. Of course, in the end, the Otis Elevator is the actual elevator. We would eventually let them in on the joke.

I was working a day shift which was not at all my norm . I have always been an evening and night owl. I blame that for the series of events that transpired that day.

When I got to work and started walking down the incline that led to the ER I noticed I was sort of limping. I looked down and realized that I was wearing two different clogs. This was 1982. White clogs were the footwear of choice for nurses. One had a buckle across the top and the other laced up. To make it even more interesting, they were two different heights, which easily explained my limp.

It was too late to go back

home so I called David and asked him to bring me one of the matching clogs so I wouldn’t have to limp the entire day. In the meantime, I hobbled in to get report and start the day.

I had been assigned a student nurse to follow me that day, which always made it far more interesting. I got to play the teacher and impart all my wisdom to the up-and-coming future nurse. As we took report from the night shift nurse it looked like a pretty easy start with only 2 patients. One had a laceration to his hand that needed a couple of stitches and the other was having a severe migraine.

The student assigned to me was Mary Beth. She was very eager to see some real “Trauma,” I assured her it was still early in the day as I showed her how to set up a laceration tray with lidocaine and betadine along with the suture that the doctor would need to sew up that laceration. I showed her how to cover the sterile field and to advise the patient not to touch the tray.

Getting out a narcotic for the patient with a headache I explained the process of counting the remaining medications to make sure that there were none missing and signing out the narcotic on a paper form. Yes, this was Old School. The narcotic sheet was maintained for the pharmacy in order to document when, where, and on whom the medication was used and to make sure that there were no narcotics being mishandled or misappropriated.

Once we finished with those two patients, I went out to triage to see what, if anything, Tammy had checked in. She was sitting at triage restocking her supplies when I asked her if she had anything interesting for my student and me.

She said I haven’t checked anyone in but that man in the waiting area has come up twice and both times when I asked if I could help him, he kind of mumbled something but then wouldn’t tell me what he was here for and went back to the waiting room.

“I don’t think he is with any of the patients in the back”, I offered.

“No, he came in about eight o’clock and has been just sitting there with his head in his hands the whole time.”

I told Tammy to let me know if he decided to check in.

About a half hour later Tammy waved me out to triage. “He finally checked in.” she said.

“He says he drank some poison! That is all I was able to get out of him. His vitals are stable, and he doesn’t seem to be in much distress. He does smell like some kind of chemicals though.”

“Perfect for my student,” I said as I picked up the clipboard containing his chart.

He was 25 years old. He was dressed in starched and pressed khakis and a button-down shirt. He looked the part of someone who worked in an office, a yuppie we called them back then. "Young upwardly mobile professionals" Obviously not a laborer or someone who worked outside. Even so, he was sweating heavily, and his oxford shirt had wet circles under both arms. His khakis were stained where he had rubbed his hands nervously on them while he waited. He was fidgety and kept wringing his hands and running them through his close-cropped hair.

Maybe he’s in the military, I thought.

No! Definitely a Yuppie.

“Mr. Stevens, if you’ll follow me, I will take you back to a room.”

He nearly jumped out of the chair when I called his name.

I called Mary Beth, my student, as I escorted him back to room 6. She hurried to follow us.

I asked him if it was OK for my student to help with his care and he mumbled his assent.

He sat on the stretcher, looking like he was ready to bolt.

“So, what brings you to the emergency room this morning? I asked, placing myself between the patient and my student in the event he tried to run or became violent.

“I drank some poison,” he stated matter of factly.

“Can you tell us what kind of poison it was? “

“I don’t know the name of it. I just know it was in a brown bottle with a yellow label and it was supposed to be for putting on plants to keep the bugs off.”

“Were you trying to kill yourself?” I asked.

He hung his head and looked away. He didn’t answer me.

“It’s very important that we know what it was you drank and how much of it. Is there anyone that we can call that could go to the house and get the bottle. We need to know the specific ingredients in order to treat you. Some of these chemicals can be washed out by pumping your stomach but some could be very caustic and pumping your stomach would do more harm than good. Once we have the name, we can notify poison control for information on how to treat you.”

He hung his head and looked at me sideways.

I checked his vital signs and gave him a gown instructing him to take off everything but his underwear.

I noticed he had a sort of chemical smell along with the smell of vomit and sweat when I got close enough to him.

“Welcome to the ER.” I whispered to my student as she wrinkled her nose.

He still hadn’t offered anyone to go to his house. I asked again, more urgently. I didn’t know how long ago he had taken the poison, but I estimated it was more than 2 hours ago since he had been in the waiting room for more than an hour before he decided to check in.

He looked at me for the first time straight on. “You need to call the police!” he said.

“I don’t think we need to do anything that drastic,” I said.

"Yes, you do,” he said frantically. “I killed my girlfriend.” He put his head in his hands and started sobbing. “She is at our house.”

“Ok, I am going to call them, but where do I need to send them?”

He gave me the same address as the one on the chart. I stepped out in the hall pulling my student along with me. Her eyes were as big as saucers, and she had gone a bit pale.

“Is he for real?” she asked.

“Hard to say. He may be mentally ill. He may be hallucinating. I don’t really know, but for sure we have to call the police. Can you go and notify security to just stand by outside his room?”

I informed the ER doctor of what I had in room 6 and he sort of laughed at me. “Let me know what the police find. Can’t really treat him until we know what he drank, if he really drank anything.” He said.

"He definitely smells like he did,” I offered as I picked up the phone and dialed the administration number for the police department. I had that one memorized since my husband was a police officer.

I told the dispatcher what the patient told me and gave her his address.

“No way,” she said.

“I’m not sure, but we have to have someone get the bottle of whatever he drank, regardless.”

“If your sending David tell him to bring my shoe when he comes.”

“What?” she asked.

“Long story but he will know what I’m talking about.”

Less than 20 minutes later I received a call from the sergeant on duty.

“He wasn’t kidding,” he said, “We found his girlfriend in the house. She had been strangled with the bed sheet. It is a crazy scene.”

“No way!” I couldn’t believe it.

“What did you find? Did you find out what he drank?”

“Yeah, there is a brown bottle on the bench in the garage. It’s called liquid 7. That isn’t the only thing though. The gas was on in the stove with the door open when we got here. Good thing none of us lit a match or we’d have all been blown to Kingdom Come.

The bathtub was full of water, and it looked like he might have tried to cut himself because there was a bloody razorblade on the edge of the tub and blood in the water. Looks like he was trying everything in the book. If he says anything to you about what happened be sure and write it down. We have a unit on the way to you, so keep him there.”

“I don’t know what we will need to do as far as the poison goes. I have to call poison control. I have security with him.”

I hung up and motioned my student over.

We went back to room 6 and Mr. Stevens had put the gown on. I saw the cuts on both wrists that were obvious now that he was out of the long sleeve shirt. I asked my student if she was comfortable cleaning his wounds and putting dressings on them? I told security what the police had found and told them to stay in the room with my student.

I had our secretary calling poison control and once she got them on the line, I took the phone and told them the story to get the appropriate treatment for someone who had ingested Liquid 7. As it turned out, the treatment for this particular poison was atropine. No need to pump his stomach.

After some further questioning he told us he had gone to the park after he left his house and had thrown up about 3 times before he decided to come to the ER.

The police arrived after the atropine had been given and Mr. Stevens sat with his head in his hands sobbing as he was read his rights.

One of the officers was my husband. He handed me my other shoe.

“I knew when I walked down that ramp that today was going to be one of those days.”

“I can’t believe he just confessed to you.” David said.

"I have a very sympathetic face.” I grinned. “I really didn’t believe him, at first, I thought he might be hallucinating. He kept saying how sorry he was and crying. I couldn’t understand most of what he was saying, but I did get that she was his girlfriend. He thought she was cheating.”

David grinned, “You do know that in Texas it’s legal to kill your wife or girlfriend if you catch her cheating.”

“Get the hell out of here!” I said, “Thanks for my shoe”.

“Yeah, you might want to change your shoe before you go outside because the press is setting up out there.”

“I will be going out the back way when I go,” I replied, “No meet the press.”

I found my student in the breakroom. She was sitting there surrounded by some other students telling them the tale of our confessed murderer.

I pulled her aside and told her she needs to keep all that information to herself and that we would need to give a statement to the police.

“Do not talk to the press. Refer everything to public relations. I repeat, do not talk to the press. I know this seems exciting but, you definitely don’t want to get involved in this mess anymore than you already are.”

“Oh, my God! This is so unreal.”

“Trust me it is not this exciting every day. This has been a weird one to say the least.”

I walked out the back at the end of the shift not wanting to be accosted by the press. At least I wasn’t limping.

The murder of a young bank teller was front page news the next day. She was 24. Her boyfriend’s confession was mentioned in the article along with the fact that he had been a patient in the emergency room when he confessed.

Never a dull moment.