Free In Case of Emergency by Courtney Moreno Page B

oxygen tubing from the rig’s house oxygen tank to the gurney’s portable one.
    We roll our patient up the ramp; he seems calmer but he’s still trembling. Steering the foot end of the gurney, I push open the double doors to the ER and look around, unsure where to go. The emergency room wing of CRH is shaped like a horseshoe, with the outer perimeter feeding off to twelve ER rooms with three beds each. The inner perimeter contains the triage station and work areas for nurses and doctors. An arched hallway free of machinery separates the two areas, and is usually filled with loaded gurneys, ambulance crews, police officers, and ER patients who gotunceremoniously yanked out of their rooms to create space for higher-priority newcomers. I know there’s a system on how to stack patients in the hallway, but I don’t know what it is.
    My confusion must be apparent. “We’re not going to park him,” Carl says. “We’ll get a room right away.”
    While Ruth and the lead medic give a report at the triage station, I get the man’s squiggly signature and check some more boxes. Carl leans on the headrest of the gurney, seeming not to notice that his folded arms are inches from the back of the man’s head.
    “You heard about this place?” he asks.
    Our patient thinks Carl is talking to him, and his face clouds over. “Terrible,” he says, his voice muffled through the oxygen mask. “Just terrible.”
    Most of the infamy surrounding Crossroads has to do with how shitty the ER care used to be, even though its reputation has improved greatly in the last four years. It was known for being overloaded, for long lines of gurneys out the door and down the ramp, and even for people dying before they ever got triaged. People sometimes waited twenty-four hours or more before being admitted. But the real scandal happened a few years ago, when the hospital was almost forced to shut down because a woman with a perforated bowel died on the waiting-room floor—after vomiting blood for forty-five minutes. People became so alarmed they started calling 911. The infamous picture someone took of her, sprawled and lifeless on the blood-and-excrement-covered floor, made the front page of the papers. And people had plenty of time to take pictures, because the body didn’t get cleaned up or removed for another forty-five minutes.
    The medic gives his report, and the triage nurse calls out to us: Room 1, Bed A. Moments after Carl and I transfer him to his bed, our pagers start vibrating. Carl rushes to tuck the corners of a new bedsheet over the gurney’s mattress while I read out the call details on the flickering green screen. Female behavioral at Florence Park, just five blocks away. Ruthappears at the doorway, barking orders, and we file after her, through the double doors and down the ramp. Carl looks thrilled.
    “Are you hoping she’ll get combative?” I ask him as we race toward the rig.
    The woman sits on a park bench, humming. About thirty-six years old, with a bombshell body and a very pretty face, she looks out, over, and past us as we stand a safe distance away, talking to her boyfriend, Frank. He explains that just a moment ago she’d been screaming and beating her fists against a nearby tree. It must be true; her fingernails are ripped to pieces and her hands are caked with dirt and blood. But they’re also folded serenely in her lap. The sounds coming from her throat remind me of cooing pigeons.
    Ruth is trying to explain to the gangly Frank that we have to wait for the police before approaching her, and he’s frantically arguing that the police aren’t necessary, he doesn’t want her to go to jail.
    “I’m sorry,” Ruth says. “Our protocol is that in any potentially dangerous situation, we have to wait for the police before approaching our patient.”
    “Betty isn’t dangerous! She’s all right, I swear she’s all right, she just gets like this sometimes.”
    “Well, we’ll be happy to take her to the hospital