Independence Day
Celebrating Your Right To Self Destruction
Vanderbilt Medical Center
Emergency Room Triage
Nashville, Tennessee
8pm, July 4, 1985
Doc Corey rubbed his face in frustration standing in front of the chastened young father. “How old’s your little girl?”
The man had been staring at his shoes as someone 30 years his junior might have done, but he looked into Doc’s eyes. “She was three last month.”
Doc nodded. “JUST three.”
The father nodded.
“And you thought it was a good idea to hand that tiny little person a LIT sparkler?”
The father appeared even younger as he shrugged his shoulders. “Her big sister had one – she wanted one.” The man rolled his eyes slightly. “It’s a KID’s toy.”
Doc looked down at the clipboard, searching for the man’s name. “Ah, Mister…Parkinson. Just curious – any idea what temperature a sparkler burns at?”
He witnessed another shrug from the father, and briefly fantasized about shoving a lit sparkler down Mr. Parkinson’s throat. “Depending on the type, anywhere from twelve HUNDRED to three THOUSAND degrees…”
Mr. Parkinson’s eye grew wide.
“Their top temperature is just a bit lower than the low temperature of an arc welder,” continued Doc Corey, in his second year of residency at Vanderbilt. “Last question. Would you hand your three-year-old daughter an arc welder?”
Parkinson shook his head. “Of course not!” But he still raised both hands. “But it’s a KID’S toy!”
Doc shook his head. “I bet if you go home, you’ll find a caution written clearly on the box warning you sparklers are only appropriate for children 12 or older.”
Mr. Parkinson huffed. “I never seen a kid that old wanna mess with a sparkler.”
“That has nothing to do with the fact that you just handed a lit sparkler to a three-year-old – AND that you gave her NO instructions before you handed it to her.”
That burned whatever grit left in Parkinson’s craw. He spied his shoes again and his eyes lowered. “You’re right.”
Doc studied the clip board again. “Lucky for you her burn’s narrow on her palm.” He looked back up at the father. “Despite your poor judgment not reading the safety warning on the sparkler box – “ he admonished as he ripped off the cover copy of the hospital’s ER post-care instructions – “I am confident you’ll read THIS – am I correct?” he glared at the subdued father.
Mr. Parkinson grabbed the instructions as if he was a drowning man grasping a life preserver. “Yessir, Doctor – I LOVE my little girl!”
Doc’s face softened and he patted the patient’s father on the shoulder. “I know you do – it’s pretty easy when they’re as cute as she is. Follow this guide, and I wanna see her in a week. Cuz this ain’t over. You hear?”
Parkinson retreated behind the curtain to join his daughter as Doc Corey wandered into the next triage room. Amid the cries of scared children, bellows of several burn and gunshot victims, and wails of keening parents, he pulled back the curtain and greeted an elderly couple – she was in a gown on the exam table covered in a blanket, and he was sitting next to his wife, holding her hand.
Doc sank into a corner chair, rested his head on the back wall, and closed his eyes. He quietly murmured, “Mrs. Salisbury, your blood tests aren’t back yet, so I have no additional news.”
The couple, puzzled, looked at one another.
Doc opened his eyes and smiled at the older folks. “I just had to get off my feet for a minute, and you two are the only sane folks in this nut house.”
This was hour four of Doc’s 12-hour ER rotation, and at 8pm July 4th, he knew it was only gonna get worse.
Patriotism brings out the half-bright nutcases in town, he thought.
Since beginning his shift, Doc Corey had:
Dug the bullet out of the shoulder of a man who used his .38 in lieu of a rocket, shooting into the air, never thinking the spent bullet might retrace its path downward, and into his shoulder;
Irrigated the eye of a teen male, removing dirt and slivers from a bottle rocket his brother had fired at him;
Cleaned second degree burns on the buttocks of another, older teen male, who accepted the dare of a friend to place two firecrackers between the cheeks of his ass and light them;
Irrigated and treated several punctured ear drums;
Sutured the lacerated navel of an older teen girl who thought it great entertainment to hide and light several firecrackers in it. Her advanced inebriation had prohibited the use of anesthetic on the navel, so he had to resew the navel “rawdogged” as the patient’s giggling boyfriend called it;
Sew up several nostrils for the same reason – “why the fascination with secreting low-level explosives in body holes,” Doc wondered;
Treat a half-dozen severely burned soles on children who stepped on extinguished but still quite hot sparkler wands because their parents didn’t think to make their children wear shoes around fireworks.
And it wasn’t even dark yet.
The older gentleman patted Doc on the shoulder as the physician jerked awake. “Here, son – take a swig of this.”
The man handed a bottle of Doctor Pepper to Doc, who glanced at the label, laughed, and downed half of it.
“See?” The gowned patient looked to her husband. “He’s ready again. Doctor Pepper does the same for me, kid.” She snapped her finger at Doc and then pointed to the privacy screen. “Now get your ass out there and save these idiots from themselves!”
Doc burst out laughing again, stood, and straightened to attention. All business now, he smartly saluted the woman, who grinned and saluted back. Doc spun on his heel and burst through the curtain just as the head of ER raced down the hallway.
“Corey! With me! Busloada kids from a high school marching band on their way home from a parade got into it with fireworks – freaked out the driver and he crashed the damn thing.”
The chief raised his hand, circling his finger in the air. “Let’s go people!”
Doctors and nurses hit the ER entrance just as a half dozen ambulances arrived, and by the sound of sirens in the distance, more were on the way. EMT’s raced to open ambulance bays, disgorging their charges all at once.
Doc Corey gasped. “What in the hell?”
The entrance was deathly still as the gurneys were raced through the ER doors. Medical teams stood, mouths agape – each gurney was in reality a wooden stretcher.
And each contained a severely wounded man.
Doc Corey spun around, grabbed one of the EMT’s by the arm…but each was just a…a soldier. Or at least, a soldier dressed in costume of the Continental Army. The heavy woolen coats were threadbare, torn, and filthy.
“Why haven’t these wounds been dressed properly?” Doc demanded. “You’re using rags? What in the HELL do you people -- “
He felt a strong hand on his shoulder. He was pulled in a half circle, then looked up into the eyes of a sober, dignified officer, exquisitely uniformed in a blue and buff wool coat. Doc looked the man head to toe, marveling at both the man’s waistcoat and breeches, and his quiet air of authority.
“My good man,” spoke the soldier. Doc noted the man’s reddish hair was pulled back in a pony-tail, but it had loosened considerably from exertion, with some of it hanging limply about his face. The man swept his hair from before him, and he continued.
“My surgeons and surgeons mates are to make do with what is on hand since the leaders in Philadelphia were forced to flee.” The man smiled grimly. “Doctor Rush has trained them as best he could. But now, if you please,” he insisted. “Would you see to my men?”
Doc Corey looked to the man, his mouth open in wonder. “Sir, yes.” He finally managed.
As he turned to direct the stretcher bearers to the ER, he was stopped short. The ER entrance was gone.
It had been replaced by the bay of a large red barn. Slabs of wood and the entrance doors of various homes were placed face down on wooden saw horses. They were quickly filling with moaning soldiers drenched in blood.
Doc helped the stretcher bearer carry one soldier who would surely lose his right leg because a shattered tibia, while over his shoulder he heard –
“General Washington, begging to report from the battlefield!”
“General Hamilton, it IS good to see you safe, lad. I feared the worst.”
Doc Corey and the stretcher bearer placed the wounded man on a slab of wood, and the bearer sighed. “Poor bastard – begging your pardon, sir – took a cannon ball that clipped that leg. Watched the whole thing happen. Felt helpless.”
Corey unwrapped the filthy bandages from around the man’s shin. “Ah, he’ll lose the leg, surely, if not from the wound, then from the infection.”
The bearer was digging through a bag, and glanced up. “Sir – what’s…an infection?”
Doc Corey waved him away. “Never mind.”
“Here it is!” muttered the bearer, pulling a nasty looking saw from the bag. He made to hand the saw to Doc. “I’ll grab a few mates to hold him down, while you cut.”
Doc’s eyes widened. “What?”
“You said yourself he was gonna lose the leg!”
“Yes, but – “Looking down, Doc stared. The soldier was gone – in his place was a young teen with a smoking Roman candle protruding from a gaping belly wound.
And the boy wasn’t lying atop a wooden slab, but what appeared to be a pane from one of the ER’s sliding glass doors…
“Corey!” someone bellowed before him.
“What now, dammit” barked Doc, turning around.
The Emergency Room Chief stared at him. “What the hell are you doing? Let’s get to it!”
“Let’s get to it!”
He felt a hand on his shoulder, shaking it.
“Let’s get to it,” he heard his wife gently calling. Doc opened his eyes, focusing them, confused.
His wife smiled down on him. “I’m glad you took a nap this time. Ain’t gettin’ any younger, old man.”
He raised his head from the armrest of the couch he was sprawled on. He rubbed his face and looked around.
“I did some arithmetic,” smiled his wife, pouring a cup of coffee. “Tonight makes our 25th Fourth of July Evening on duty.” She handed him a cup, then poured one herself. “You hear? It’s already started.”
Doc’s head cleared as he focused on the sounds: firecrackers, bottle rockets, the low thumps of larger fireworks. It wasn’t quite dark yet, but the fireworks had already begun.
It was their 25th straight Independence Day serving Tullahoma with their clinic doors open. 25 years of hope. Hoping (mostly in vain) their fellow citizens would exercise their right to shoot off fireworks more safely.
Doc’s wife glanced out the clinic door and spied headlines pulling up. “Here we go.”
But every year, Tullahoma celebrants demonstrated their spirited, and flawed, humanity.
The clinic door opened, the bell jingling – an adult accompanying a teen male with a wash cloth covering one eye.
“Damn, Doc. I’m glad to see you,” the adult spoke up. “Don’t tell me we’re the first of the night?”
“Yup,” breathed Doc Corey. “But definitely not the last.”
The sentence was punctuated by a low THUMP, a pause, a bright aerial explosion, then various “oohs” and aaahs”.