It Was Bottoms Up

There were times in my life that I’ve been surprised when something happened, but then there were times that I was shocked. One such time was when I was working in the triage area of the emergency department at Frick Hospital. A man walked in with the seat of his pants covered in blood. He was pressing a towel tightly against his bottom. I hurried him inside and helped the other nurses remove his trousers and underwear while keeping pressure over the area that the towel had been covering. His pants had an almost three inch rip across the seat of the trousers. We removed his clothing and began to cleanse away the blood. As we moved closer and closer to the injury, we were able to see the cut was large and deep. We needed to see exactly what had been cut and how large it was. Finally, after much cleaning we changed the towel for a large, absorbent pad. The laceration of his skin was nearly as long as the rip in his pants.

            While we were cleaning and assessing the wound, the man explained that he had been at a party and was shoved onto an empty beer bottle that had been left on a chair. “It shattered and cut me.”

            The glass shard had cut deeply, lacerating his anal sphincter. When the emergency room doctor saw the depth of the wound, its location, and the severity of it, he said, “Keep pressure on it and notify the surgeon on call.”

            One of the other nurses started an I. V. and gave a dose of antibiotic. We hurried to get the man ready for the operating room. I went back to my post in the triage area.

I hadn’t been there for long when a teenage girl walked in. She looked about thirteen or fourteen. I asked her, “May I help you?”

Flippantly and disrespectfully she said, “Yeah, I’m looking for my old man.” This was in the early 1970’s and such a cavalier attitude was unusual and unexpected.

“What’s your father’s name?” I asked.

It was her reply that nearly bowled me over. I could hardly believe what I’d heard.

Without giving me her father’s name, she chirped, “He’s the one with the new A**shole!”