“You’re a stupid bastard! You Stupid Bastard! You’re just a government cronie!”
This was how the trip to the ED of my LAST call of internship started. We found Mr. Happy Pants sleeping ON the street with his head on the curb. A rather busy street at that. Oh, and by “sleeping” I mean passed out. Drunk as a Skunk. Bombed. Inebriated.
Yeah. So he wasn’t happy. Being the cautious young moron that I am, I yelled at him when we rolled up. Blew the air horn. Just trying to raise him. Not wanting to walk up to him and shake him awake… since waking drunks that way never ends well. Finally he got up–as PD rolled up, 2 squads, both with new recruits. New officers are fun. They have a certain “gung ho” attitude that can’t be matched.
They jumped into it. One grabbed his arm, “helping” him stand. The other went digging for the wallet. Well, this didn’t please our newly found friend and he went swinging. Remember how I said the new recruits were gung ho… Well, they swung back. As I said before, it didn’t end well.
They go through the ropes, cuff him, shove him in a car, deal with his non-sense… Then say “Detox is closed…. They’re all full. You guys wanna take him to ‘specials’?” Um… Do I have a choice at this point. So I go over to the car, and start talking to him. He’s being rather pleasant to me, since I’m one of the few people who hasn’t done anything to make him feel worse. Offer to help him and tell him he’s going to for a ride in the wambulance. He’s ecstatic. Till he sees the restraints.
Yup. 4 pt restraints… And my favorite friend was handy–the pillow case. Get him down(with the help of my over zealous friends) and on our way we go. We refuse the PD escort since our sleepy pal’s ability to fight is nill with his limbs secured.
As soon as the doors to the truck close it starts. “You’re a stupid bastard! You Stupid Bastard! You’re just a government cronie!”
On, and on, and on, and on. Just repeating versions of the same lovely phrase. But I have to do an assessment, don’t I? So I go into it, SAMPLE, blah blah blah. And then the fun starts. I ask if he has any pain anywhere at all. Rather quick for his level intoxication, he responds quickly with “yup. Yeah. I’ve got a gigantic pain in my ass! You. You are just a pain in my ass!”
So, beings that we’ve identified a new source of pain for him I feel it is important to identify the severity of said pain… “Sir, on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the worst pain imaginable, what would you rate this pain in your ass?”
“10. You stupid bastard.”
