Guncrank Diaries
How Was Your Day?
Emergency rooms are the repositories of humankind’s greatest drama.
When you work in a place like this, it can be tough not to take it home.
I don’t recall ever doing a full 12 hours in the urban ER, where I learned my craft without at least one gunshot wound. The record was seven. People are mean to each other. There’s no place short of a battlefield where this timeless axiom is made more patently manifest.
We were some of those homeschool freaks. My wife and three kids did school from the living room every day. Where a typical student/teacher ratio in a regular school might be two to 20 or 25, in ours, it was two to three. All three turned out great, and my wife emerged with her sanity intact. However, this meant that when I came home at weird hours from the hospital, sometimes it was to find quite a lot of activity.
Bringing Horrible Home
I had worked all night and wrapped up right after dawn. This particular stint had been extra horrible. I pulled into the driveway grimy, tired and foul. I slipped into the laundry room from the garage and was greeted by Samantha, our golden retriever.
Samantha was a rescue and a mighty fine hound. She was a doormat of a dog who didn’t have a violent or vicious bone in her body. She was forever eager to please and interminably patient with the kids. When they wanted to roll around on the floor with her or tug her ears, she just went with it. For that stage in our lives, she was the perfect dog.
I don’t myself care for cats. I don’t want bad things to happen to cats; I just don’t have any great affection for them. I view cats like lizards or birds. They’ll stick around if there’s something in it for them, but I never got the vibe that a cat really loved me.
By contrast, I have had dogs that would give their dying breath for me. Dogs are limitlessly loyal and protective. Dogs love you when you’re tired, grouchy, or smell bad. Dogs love unconditionally. People could learn a lot from their dogs.
This particular morning Samantha was in the laundry room because she had been distracting during school. I found myself similarly exiled from time to time. As a result, however, she was really glad to see me. On this day, I kind of needed that.
I scratched behind her ears and rubbed her neck. She responded by wagging her tail until it looked like it might break off. On the other side of the door, I could hear laughter and happiness coming from my family. The kids were doing school, and that was serious. However, there was pure, unfiltered love there. It was my favorite place in the world.
Golden retrievers make the finest pets. Will’s was a rescue named Samantha.
Dog Sense
Before I opened the door, I noticed Samantha behaving strangely. She seemed fixated on my sneakers, licking and smelling all over them. She was always an affectionate animal, but this was something else. Her interest in my footwear seemed unnatural. That’s when I noticed it.
My sneakers were soaked in human blood. We typically wear little disposable foot coverings, but the ER this evening had been extra special bad, and there hadn’t been time. I removed my shoes, rinsed them in the sink, and put them out in the garage to keep them away from the dog. I similarly attended to my socks before depositing them in the laundry. I then pushed my way through the door and into that other world.
How Was Your Night?
My sweet precious wife looked up and asked innocently, “How was your night?” How do you answer that? Do you respond with, “Well, I just had to put my sneakers in the garage because they were soaked in human blood, and I couldn’t get the dog to leave them alone. How was yours?”
No, you don’t say that. You just smile like a monkey with a fresh grapefruit and say, “Fine, thanks. Tell me about yours.”
My wife didn’t sign up for that. It’s not fair to bring that kind of execrable baggage home and befoul such a precious innocent place with it. However, that baggage sometimes needs to go someplace.
When there is a school shooting or something similar, once the smoke clears, there are counselors who descend on the place to try to make folks whole. In certain professions, however, that’s not really practical. If you live in a haunted house long enough, that haunted house eventually starts to feel like home.
Try not to judge soldiers, cops, physicians, nurses and ER staff if their behavior seems a bit outside accepted norms. Sometimes dark humor or quirky mannerisms are just part of the job. And when they say their day was fine, try not to pry. Please just be patient and do your best to make them feel normal.
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