I'd just come in on day shift. The ambulance brought in a portly, 60-something female, an alleged overdose of an unknown quantity of Xanax and Vicodin. Oh, and alcohol.
She radiated hostility, glaring at each of us, struggling to focus her glassy eyes. She immediately demanded to be allowed up to use the bathroom, cussing us at the top of her lungs when we told her she had to stay in bed to avoid falling. She declined a bedpan, then deliberately voided all over the bed and her clothes.
Nurse-retirement-age and I spent 20 minutes fighting her out of her sodden clothes and into a clean gown, threading the IV tubing and bag out of the sleeve of the wet gown, then back through the sleeve of the dry one.
Later I heard her say to a visitor, "I wonder how that nurse and doctor would like it if I hit them right in the side of the head." When I related this to Nurse Retirement Age, she wondered how Miss Drunk Suicide Attempt would like jail.
Eventually the admissions clerk called to say the daughter was here to see her. Visibly embarrassed, she'd just gotten off work at the sheriff's department in a nearby county where she worked the night shift as a dispatcher. I felt sorry for her, seeing her interact with her drunk mother, undoubtedly a lifelong no-win situation.
Before long, the Miss Drunk Suicide Attempt starts bellowing for her CPAP machine.
"I need my Goddamn CPap machine! None of these dumbass doctors here know shit about CPap." And then, my favorite part. "What're you gonna do? Just let me lie here and die?"
And here I'd have thought she might appreciate us killing her so she wouldn't have to worry about going to hell for doing it herself.
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