Tales from the ER
Yes Kids, 'They're' Out There!
A modern urban emergency room is a surreal place at times. Photo: U.S. Army by SPC Reese Brown
Cops have hard jobs, particularly in Information Age America. In fact, the argument could be made that theirs is literally an impossible task. They work among the most dysfunctional members of our society, can be attacked and killed at any moment and then have their actions and decisions dissected in microscopic detail in retrospect from positions of comfort and security. Well, at least you can get rich doing it. Or not …
I have a friend who was a career cop outside Seattle. He was once called to a scene as backup after two other cops were having difficulty subduing a suspect in the midst of a “mental health crisis.” What he found on arrival was a naked man vigorously attacking the two on-scene officers, tearing their uniforms to pieces and clawing like a rabid weasel.
They had already deployed two Tasers and two cans of OC spray to no effect. When not actively trying to eat the two policemen, this insane drug-addled lunatic was slamming his own head against the asphalt in a failed effort at making the voices go away. The only way my buddy got the guy to calm down long enough to get handcuffs on him was to grab his testicles vigorously and twist.
Most cops likely gravitate toward the job for the glamor …
The Man
Our hero was right out of central casting. A bit north of six feet tall and heavily muscled, his shaved head sported a prominent swastika tattooed on the side. SS runes and sundry other stigmata of the Aryan Brotherhood liberally adorned the rest of him. When he arrived at the emergency department it took half a dozen of us to hold him down.
There is quite literally no telling what sort of toxic chemical milieu his heart was pumping. Suffice to say, this guy was not a citizen of the same planet as the rest of us. He was screaming and thrashing like some kind of trapped animal.
All that would have been fine had he simply been running about in circles in the middle of a field someplace. However, this guy had gotten sideways with a friend, business associate, or amateur pharmacist earlier in the evening and the exchange had degenerated into violence. His erstwhile buddy then had the poor grace to break a beer bottle across the side of his head. In the process, he severed this man’s temporal artery.
The Problem
The temporal arteries are big pieces of high-pressure plumbing that run along the sides of your forehead. When somebody is tooled up like this guy, these pipes move an astronomical amount of blood. In this case, the stuff was spraying across the room and splashing in generous lines along the ceiling. It took no small amount of personal discipline not to think about the various pathological organisms possibly living in this guy’s circulatory system. He didn’t seem the sort to reliably practice safe sex.
I retrieved one of those multi-shot surgical staplers and we all dogpiled on the guy. There was no time or inclination for anesthesia. Eight sequential staples later, his modelling career was shot but he was no longer actively trying to bleed to death.
The chore complete, we had to figure out what to do with him. He was clearly in no shape to be released upon an unsuspecting populace, so the cops just handcuffed his arms and legs to the bedrails. We put him in an otherwise empty room, turned down the lights, and left him alone for a little me time.
This is a white supremacist skinhead named Curtis Allier. He’s currently
in prison for life in Utah for killing a corrections officer. Will says he
eems pretty typical of the genre. Photo: Public Domain
The Look
I’m a doctor, not a zookeeper. I did stick my head in periodically. I remember it like it was yesterday despite the intervening decades. Whenever our eyes met, the man would lunge upward, straining with every fiber of his being against his restraints while making the most unsettling inhuman guttural noises. He was shirtless, thoroughly jacked and utterly horrifying, I would just smile, wave and let him be. Time heals all wounds …
They say the eyes are the window into the soul. His were dark, maniacal and most thoroughly insane. This stoned skinhead’s bloody visage was freshly marred by a prominent serpentine trail of surgical staples looking much akin to a model train track running along the side of his face. Just another day at the office.
Ruminations
So the next time you’re tempted to get frustrated with a police officer either up close while they’re doing their job or at a distance based upon some sordid news report, just mine this event for context. Their world is not quite like ours. They are called upon to deal with very difficult people and do some very hard things that simply must be done. Try to cut them some slack. They’re human just like the rest of us.
