The Star Strangled Banner

The small sip of soda a few hours ago certainly wasn’t enough to sustain Tara’s craving for sustenance. As her stomach gurgled and howled, the inebriated fifty-three year old man chuckled and started singing the Star Spangled Banner. All she could do was cringe and hope that his family would come get him and soon. It was 2 a.m. early Saturday morning and she just didn’t have the compassion that most nurses would normally have for wounded patients. Of course, that would be determined by how one would define the terms “wounded” and “compassion”, but in any case she was ready to kick him in the shins just too really give him something to howl about.

And the rocket’s red glare…the bomb’s bursting in air…

That was it. Tara tightened the strap of the wrist restraint just enough to get an “Ouch lady!” She looked at Mr. Truman and said with an annoyed tone, “I’ll be back in a bit.” As she turned to walk off and ignore the verbal knives thrown at her from behind, she winked at the guard and demanded in a whispered voice, “Just keep him on the gurney for ten minutes!” A bee-line was made first for the little girls room, then the kitchen, or as she liked to call it, the Petri-dish. Her pet name for the break room referred to the never ending amount of bacteria and fungus one had to pilfer through jus to get a “clean” fork, thanks to the day shift of course for never cleaning up their crap. Emergency room employee kitchens were exceptions to the rule of standard good hygiene, a true test of human immune response. As Tara kicked her feet up and turned her focus to a silent television screen, her mind wandered to the social activities of what few friends she had on the outside.

The searing pain felt from a bump in her knee alerted Tara that she had fallen asleep and one of the passive aggressive interns needed her to diagnose and propose treatment for yet another one of his patients. It was old hat for the fresh interns to look to the nurses for help before they attempted to kill someone, hoping they would find a nurse competent and not as equally passive aggressive. “At least they try to save’em before they try to kill’em”, Tara thought sarcastically. But in her mind she knew that she was one of “the chosen”, and as much as she sometimes hated it, it made her feel good to know there was a little faith in her medical capabilities. However, she couldn’t decide if that request,coming from a new intern, was faith or fear of the inability to fluff their chest after choosing act on her treatment plan.

Gave truth to the light…that our flag was still there…

“Oh good God in Heaven” she thought as she ditched the intern to get to her minimally restrained patient. The security guard shot her a glaring look as Tara’s eyes followed the slurred singing. When she pulled back the curtain to the see the singing “banner man”, her first inclination was to puke and just go home. As she stood in horror trying to process the view, the singing stopped and a very foul smelling laughter filled the room while banner man rolled around as much as he could, his hands turning purple from the wrist restraints. There was a woman, equally as drunk and half naked (not the better half, if there would have been one) sitting right on top of him, bobbing up and down like one of those little red fishing bobbers during a nibble.

She decided not to puke, and instead shot a help-me and a how-could-you-let-this-happen glance at the six foot two guard. Together, Tara and the guard named Chuck strategically removed the woman from the room and covered her obese, slithering body, somehow disallowing the public from seeing what should never again be seen by the human race. “Well,” she thought, “at least the singing has stopped.” She turned back to Mr. Truman and covered his ‘working parts’ with a sheet, deciding he needed a brief cooling off period before getting the one inch laceration to the back of his head stitched. “After all,” she justified to herself, “I believe the book says that we have around eight hours from the time of injury to get that thing sown up.” With that she returned to the nurse’s station and grabbed the top record of the stack of twenty, and trudged to the waiting room to call her next victim...