In Case of Emergency…

I don’t have a lot of experience with emergency rooms, but I’m pretty sure they’re supposed to be open in case of an actual emergency. Yet, there we were, at a small town ER with the doors locked. We had to pick up a phone to request for help and then the help took its sweet time getting there.

Kirsten just had her first horse experience and is likely to never go near another. It bit her finger while searching for a treat. It was stressful and scary and not something I will ever forget.

The emergency room was empty, except for us. There were three large areas that could be sectioned off if needed and it smelled like medical supplies. We had some time to notice the details.

After a lifetime of waiting, an x-ray led to a sigh of relief – it was not broken. The doctor said it was a superficial scrape and bandaged her up.

I was just thinking how drama tends to follow me around, when a man stumbled through the two large emergency room doors. I have no idea how he even got in, since the ER was locked tight when we arrived.

At first I thought the man had severe scarring on his face and I looked away for a moment. Then it clicked in my head that it was, in fact, fresh blood and he did, indeed, have a head wound that was spewing blood. I’m not a trained professional but I could have told him to pull up a chair and get ready for stitches.

He looked at the nurse, pointed at his head and said, “Uh, where do I go for this?”

For some reason she assumed he was with our ER party and the nurse did not immediately help him. (Trust me, it was not the first “moment” she had that day.) When it finally clicked, she asked him what happened.

“I dropped a treadmill.”

The nurse jumped up, took him to the other side of the emergency room and pulled the curtain.

“Why don’t you tell me exactly what happened?”

“Well, I was trying to throw a treadmill over a fence…”

Sometimes people deal with stress by laughing. Our group had quite a stressful day and then we heard this guy tell the story of how he dropped a treadmill on his face. We couldn’t help it. We laughed (quietly though, the curtains are thin).

My experience with emergency rooms seemed to double in one day. After Treadmill Man fell into the picture, I think Kirsten started to feel better about her misfortune. At least she didn’t drop a treadmill on her face. And really, I’ve heard her tell this story and she’s great at it. It usually starts out with…”One time, when I was in the emergency room because a horse bit me…”

They never see the treadmill coming.