In an institution that boasted of its tight security, anyone in clerical garb could nevertheless travel unchallenged through the general areas of the hospital, such as patients’ rooms.
Of course Carleson had the advantage of being known by many in the hospital, particularly the Emergency staff. As part of his missionary training, he had become a paramedic. This had prepared him to administer, in effect, first aid.
However, it did not suit his personality to observe restrictions when the needs of people cried out for assistance. More often than not in areas he had served, there was no doctor for uncounted miles. So Carleson elected to do whatever he could to respond to the sick.
Even when procedures clearly exceeded his training-surgery and the like-he would pray and then act. In every such instance, if he had not acted, the individual would have died anyway. The worst that could happen, then, would be death on a makeshift operating table instead of death in a hut or in a jungle. More often than not, the patient survived. That Carleson freely attributed more to prayer than to his meager skill.
He never spoke of his medical operations in the bush. It was among those thorny topics better left unmentioned.
Yet, in some extrasensory perceptional way, the medical staff of the average hospital somehow sensed the link that joined Father Carleson to them.
So it was with Receiving Hospital in Detroit. Other religious personnel might be able to enter restricted areas, but they very definitely would be limited in where they could go and what they could do. Nothing of an offensive nature. Just a firm easing of the person out of sensitive areas.
But based on that implicit camaraderie, Carleson virtually had the run of the place.
Today the hospital was doing for Carleson what he had hoped-distracting him from his personal concerns and letting him lose himself in the lives and pains of others.
All Emergency personnel who were not otherwise engaged were either inside or at the door of Trauma Room Three, where a senior resident, numerous interns, nurses, and technicians were doing everything possible to save a young man who had been overcome by toxic fumes.
Carleson continued on his unplanned tour through Emergency toward the hospital proper. He smiled as he passed a gurney on which sat a rather good-looking man engaged in a seemingly reasonable discussion concerning treatment for pain. The doctor was insisting on a prescription for Motrin. The patient was arguing, with decreasing composure, in favor of codeine.
Carleson well knew the powerful difference between the two analgesics. He also knew the young man was going to need a fix of something soon or he would slip into withdrawal symptoms.
At this point there was still an element of humor in the exchange. Before long, the black comedy would disintegrate in the face of the patient’s desperate craving for drug release.
There was nothing Carleson could do about it. No prayer or blessing, no offer of understanding and friendship could supersede the patient’s yearning for oblivion.
The young doctor was being quite resolute … although in actuality, there was little else he could do. Inevitably, what was now a fairly amicable difference of opinion would segue into a demeaning-even violent-pleading, demanding in the face of intractable refusal.
Carleson moved on.
An elderly man whose face testified to his having weathered many an intemperate northern season sat gingerly on a gurney. Loudly he gave witness that these doctors and nurses were badly underpaid. For this unsolicited testimonial he received affectionate support from the staff. At Carleson’s approach, the man generously included the priest among those insufficiently compensated. Carleson thought the man didn’t know whereof he spoke. Nonetheless, the priest gave him a bright smile and a thumbs-up.
The attendant, about to wheel the man to surgery, informed Carleson that the patient had tucked a pint of liquor in his back pocket, then absentmindedly plumped himself down on a cement curb, thus emptying the precious liquid directly into the sewer to the delight of thirsty rats. And, of course, lacerating his rump.
He certainly didn’t seem to feel any pain. Undoubtedly he had consumed some of the contents before the container smashed.
Last in the parade of trauma scenes was a gurney holding a naked man covered only with a hospital-issue sheet. Standing at the patient’s head, an intern attempted to determine what was wrong. Had he been drinking?
“A beer … maybe two.”
“C’mon … two?”
“Two! Maybe three. No more’n three.”
The intern began inserting a nasal-gastric tube through the patient’s nostril. The patient began to gag.
“Swallow, man, swallow,” the intern urged.
Suddenly, the patient began throwing up. Quickly, the intern turned the patient’s head to one side so he wouldn’t drown in his own vomit.
To Carleson, it was a repulsive sound and a nauseating odor. A nurse standing nearby obviously was similarly affected. “I’ve seen it a million times,” she said, “but it still makes me gag.”
Carleson was grateful.
A heavy, pungent odor permeated the room. “Three beers, eh? Smells more like whiskey to me,” the intern said.
At the foot of the gurney, a nurse shook her head with certainty. “Jamaica rum!”
Before leaving Emergency, Carleson glanced back. Trauma Room Three remained the center of activity. The beehive continued to swirl and an attentive audience was absorbed in the goings-on.
That’s what it was all about. The life of one person. The most sophisticated and expensive machinery available-and the most knowledgeable and dedicated personnel-bent to the purpose of saving a life.
Carleson thought again of his work in regions that were considered advanced if there was clean water available. If there was electricity, one felt that one had entered the twentieth century.
The TV series “M*A*S*H” referred to near-frontline doctors’ work as “meatball surgery.” Compared with what went on here in Receiving, the Korean front was rudimentary. But measured against Carleson’s capabilities in the jungle, “M*A*S*H” was the Mayo Clinic of the Far East
Whatever, his journey through Emergency accomplished the hoped for. His own concerns and problems were forgotten for the moment.
He left ER and proceeded to the pastoral care department to check on the patients he hoped to visit.
There weren’t many. Most on his list were people who, after previous casual visitation, had asked him to return. Actually, only one elderly man was a bona fide parishioner of Ste. Anne’s.
Checking further, he found that quite a few on his list had been released. One had died. That left only five, including the parishioner, to call on.
As luck would have it-as his luck frequently had it-four were not in their rooms. CAT scan, X rays; two in physiotherapy.
But good old dependable Herbert Demers was in.
Herbert seldom went anywhere. Doctors periodically tried to have him transferred out, claiming that the treatment he was getting in the hospital could just as well be administered in a nursing home. And-this was an extended busy period-they needed his bed.
But, inevitably, just as arrangements were complete, Herbert would lapse again into a critical condition, requiring extensive, sometimes intensive, care.
Herbert’s condition was further complicated by an order to resuscitate.
That had come about shortly after he was admitted. Herbert’s family consisted of a grandson and the grandson’s wife. A doctor didn’t want to take the time and trouble to explain to them the various options available. So he used the catchall, “Do you want us to do everything we can for your grandfather?”
The couple would have been perfectly disposed to waive extraordinary measures and let Grandpa expire in peace. If Grandfather had been able to express himself, he very definitely would have been of the same mind.