Oh No, Not Beneath the Collarbone!

Night shifts, night shifts. I asked my dad (who works night shifts often) for a story over dinner. He’s an emergency room doctor, and I pretty much recorded everything he told me. It’s mostly him talking with me interrupting somewhat. I think I’ll just solo it to his story next time, but this is the version with the interruptions.

Ok so this is going back twenty five years plus. So I’m newly, new doctor, uh, working single coverage at night, I’m I’m working at a hospital from Brookdale trauma center it’s in the heart of the worst areas in Brooklyn, if you draw a map with a line through it all, that would be Brookdale hospital.

I said, “Mmmhmm the epicenter of violence, of inner city violence ok.”

My dad continues, It was a Friday night and as one of the other doctors state, “in Brooklyn, they solve their arguments with bullets.” That night already I had called the trauma team five times to go to the operating room for gunshots, uhhh, several, several for knife cuts, and then the trauma team was exhausted, and just before their shift was over, a gunshot comes in and the gunshot was in the left upper chest right at the level of the meat just above the collarbone alright and the guy comes in and I said “up, call the trauma team” and they come down and they look at me and said, “Really? Do we really need to do this? Look, there’s not even blood coming out” and I said, “Well, it is a gunshot, and it is in the chest, so I think we should do this case now rather than wait the ten minutes before the end of your shift so you could pass it off to some other doctor” so the Chief Resident said “Alright let’s do it.” (Actually it was the senior resident). So he said “Alright.” So I think they were pretty exhausted because they basically - so the expression goes in trauma “You put a finger in every orifice and a tube in every hole” so they they they… we examine the guy, do a rectal exam to make sure she’s not bleeding internally, and the senior said “put in a ng tube” so the jr resident takes an ng tube and I think probably did it a little more abrupt than he normally would caused the guy to gag. The minute the patient gags his cortid artery opens up (actually his subclavian artery opens up near where the clavicle was,) and revealed his clavicle had been shot and broken in half and was hiding the fact that his subclavian artery was severed, which is a life threatening illness, and you can bleed out with a subclavian artery in about 30 seconds to a minute, maybe a minute. So he starts bleeding and the blood poured out of the hole in the chest like a garden hose with water- like have you ever seen a garden hose without a cap on it, it just pours out in a stream of blood. Now I’m the emergency doc so I deal with the airway and I’m standing there and I see this blood just gush right out of this patient’s chest pool. So, you do what you’re supposed to do. You reach your finger in there, you hook it under the subclavian artery, and you just pull it tight to pull down the pressure so the guy won’t bleed to death in a few seconds. 

I said, “Oh, wow.”

So my hand’s inside the guy’s chest wall— I’m holding him— and I look up at the senior resident who’s turned pale. I mean, she was as pale as a ghost. She went “uh” so they called the chief resident over because they need to go to the operating room. So the Chief Resident’s name is Kumar, and so, there I am holding the subclavian artery and of course now the trauma team takes it very seriously, it bleed like you’ve never seen before. I mean, you know, just stream of blood. So, the senior resident putting in lines, ordering blood, putting in stuff, getting him ready for the operating room, getting anesthesia, calling everybody to get the OR ready. Then the chief resident Kumar comes over and I see him putting on a sterile glove… meanwhile, my glove was not sterile because I had to do that in an emergency. So I said, “Kumar, come over, come here.” So Kumar takes a look at the guy and I say, “Are you ready?” He said, “Yes.” I take my finger out and the blood comes gushing out again so Kumar scoops his finger in, hops onto the stretcher, and he’s straddling the patient backwards with sterile gloves in his hand, and he’s holding his artery, and that’s how he went to the operating room, he rolled away on the operating room. That was my last case, that was a pretty exhausting night.

“Did he recover?” My dad said “oh I dunno, I’m an ER guy.” I said, “Oh, that’s long term…” My dad said, “That’s chronic care.” I said “Ok! Wow, crazy.” My dad said, “Yeah.” I said, “Alright, that was a good story, good story, thank you dad, that one will definitely make it at least to the comment section.” He said, “That’s night time, right?” I said, “Yeah, night shift, very good night shift.”

And then I finished dinner. I'm Chinese by the way, that's why Asian American was chosen as a tag. I don't have enough words, so I'll just describe why the story is Chinese. *ahem*. This is holistically written story, and as such, is very Chinese. The sentence structures focus on what was happening through the whole case, with other doctors and specialities included. It also follows a Chinese story structure, highlighting teamwork and group cohesion as some of the important factors which enabled Kumar (thanks for being a doc, Kumar) to hop on that guy's chest and then grab his chest artery. I personally have not been that close to someone's innards, so I didn't really transcribe every "oh" and "uh" said between the two of us. I also didn't add any effects from me eating dinner, cause that would be weird. Hopefully I have enough words to submit now.