Full Moon Party in the ER

The emergency department where I work is small. Ten beds comprise the whole thing. When it gets busy we have to run pretty fast. The nice thing is that it doesn't get that busy too frequently. Having written that I know I'm going to get my ass kicked tonight when I go to work. ER nurses are a superstitious lot and even though I never used to be I've learned to never use the "Q" word while working. Every ER I've ever been in from Hawaii to Seattle is afraid of the word "quiet". It's weird, but true, that when someone says "It sure is quiet tonight" all hell will break loose within 30 minutes. Someone will walk in having a heart attack as the scanner pages out the fire department for a bus rollover and four ambulances roll up to the door. I used to even joke about it when I first started working by loudly saying, "Boy, it sure is quiet in here! HA HA". There would be a few seconds of silence as people stopped talking and turned to glare at me...right before the scanner started squawking and the ambulance bay doors flew open. I didn't do that for long as I kept getting hammered with critical patients every time I said it, not to mention people stopped talking to me. So I've learned to be superstitious with the best of them. I even once worked with a doctor who wouldn't let anyone say the word "pizza" when he was on shift as he was convinced it had the power of the word "quiet". Not believing anything carried the weight of "quiet", one night I joke to him that we should order a pizza later on (I know, I'm a slow learner). He only glared at me (obviously not getting the hilarity of the joke). Hours later after an impossibly busy night of trauma codes and critically dying patients I fervently apologized for my lack of faith...kind of like a professional confessional (ba da boom!).
Last night, there was a full moon. You can only imagine, that if the "Q" word (I have to go to work soon so I'll stop saying it now) works on our imaginations so strongly, something like a full moon wreaks havoc. I'm not sure what would happen if someone actually said the "Q" word ON a full moon night and I hope I never do. Let's leave that monster under bed. So, it was a rather qu, no, calm (a thesaurus is helpful when doing emergency work) night in the ER last evening when I walked by room 5 across from the nurses station. Sitting in the wheelchair next to the bed was a woman that from behind appeared to be having a seizure. Head and body twitching rhythmically and quite energetically. I would have run in and thrown her in bed but there was a nurse standing right next to her asking her questions (and the fact that she weighed approx 350 pounds was also a factor). People having seizures don't answer questions. She was. Here begins the full moon weirdness I thought as I walked into the room to assist. This poor gal was rambling on about her ten thousand symptoms and how the EMTs broke her foot so she couldn't get into bed without help. I steeled my spinal muscles and assisted her to her feet, correction, foot. Did I mention the 350 pounds part of this story? She stood bent over the bed, "wait, wait, wait! Give a minute to get ready here!" As I looked at the other nurse and prepared to roll my eyes northward, the patient startled me back to the present. "Are you offended by nudity?" It was a question that I was totally unprepared for. Multiple answers filled my mind as my colleague busted a gut in a way that only medical people can...full on gut busting belly rolling laughter without making a sound. I bit my lip and filtered through the appropriate responses. "Yours or mine" was the first to be crossed off my list. Rapidly followed by "Oh God NO!". "Yes" would have been a lie though the easiest path. All that came out was "Not at all". Cool, calculated, professional. My answer wasn't really necessary though because by the time my answer came her sweats pants were around her ankles. The mu mu slipped off her top in a speed that belied her girth.
There she was.
"I'm a nudist" was the next thing she said as she started her bizarre shaking all over again. "You have GOT to get in bed right now" was the next thing I said as we tipped her onto the gurney. As I hurriedly left the room I passed a young guy bent over in agony hobbling to room 4. He was pale and sweaty and holding onto his belly. I followed him into the room and started and IV while he writhed and writhed. He could barely answer the questions I was asking. He was in the worst pain of almost anyone I've seen before. That should have set off the first alarm bells. The scars on his belly had shown previous surgery so I was thinking of all the things that could have been causing this much pain. What I didn't think of (and why is their diagnosis always what I don't think of) is that this guy was here to get free drugs. He faked it well and actually writhed enthusiastically for over an hour and a half so I guess he deserved the 3 milligrams of dilaudid (ie, "good sh%#" in his world) he got before he put on his beanie cap and when no one was really paying attention pulled up the collar of his jacket and slid out the door with his ass hanging out of his hospital gown. Not a good look for a criminal. What really pissed me off about the whole thing is that at the same time he came in the ambulance bay doors opened up and brought in a critical head bleed (ie stroke). My energies were then split between someone who really needed all my attention and some jerk who wanted some good narcotics (not to mention the IV site he went home with to give himself all the drugs he could shoot into it). If you see someone out there with an IV hanging from their arm and a hospital gown on, do me a favor and kick him in his bare ass for me. It's now a day later and I'm already excited for the next full moon to arrive.
When I was growing up my dad had a telescope with an 8 inch mirror. A very powerful thing that he would take up onto the hillside on his place in the Santa Cruz mountains. We kids would look through it and see the rings of Jupiter and distant galaxies that were really just blurry stars. But I loved looking at the full moon and all of the craters and even the shadows of the edges of the craters. What a magical place our world is and looking up at the moon was a reminder of that magic. How I wish I could recall that magic of a full moon. These days, hidden behind a thick layer of cold northwest clouds, it now represents haunting memories of drug seekers and unhealthy nudists.