Mr. Barns

I remember the day well. Walking into the room I noticed that it was cold and sterile, even for a hospital room. I guess that when a patient has no family or friends the staff likes to put them in the crappy room.

I felt sorry for Mr. Barns, not because he had no friends or family to come visit, but mainly for the huge gash on his leg. I sat at his bed side watching him sleep and observed a large gob of goo on his face. As I sat there watching him, the voice of an old patient entered my mind. 'I hate it when people watch me sleep. I never know if I am drooling.'

I think that Mr. Barns would be ok with me watching him, he was not drooling. Then I realized why I had walked into the room. I had to check on Mr. Barns, but then I had a new issue facing me. The goo.

What was the goo? Why was it on his face? Who put it there? I could only deal with one question at a time. So I tackled the issue of  trying to figure out what the goo was. I touched it. It was slimy. I have felt slimy things like that before, so it was not odd or foreign to me. You see, I am as nurse, I have touched many slimy things. I gathered my nerves and took a small sniff at first. Who knows it could had a fowl odor, lucky for me, it did not.

I cleaned off my hand and went back to the far reaches of my mind to pull out some of the useless things that I leaned in nursing school, I looked at his chart. It took me a little bit to read the chart, not because I did not know how to read it, but my God, do these doctors not know how to write? Their hand writing is like an attorney, you can't read it.

I began to wonder how many people on are death row because someone could not read an attorney's hand writing. Poor guy, to have to sit in a cell and do nothing but think about dying and all you did was run a red light. I guess justice is blind.

I was finally able to figure out the chart and what was on Mr. Barns. It was a triple antibiotic ointment! Why were they applying to three times a day? Oh, because the chart said to. Well that one was easy to figure out.

I now knew what the goo was, now I had to figure out why it was on his face. This one was going to take me a little longer to figure out.

Again I reach way back into the recesses of my mind.  I guess that I did not go back far enough, because nothing was coming to me. 

Then like a bolt of lightening, it hit me!  I looked at his chart again to see if he had any more injuries when he came in.  Darn, he didn’t, just the gash in his leg.

I kept digging, nothing.  I decided to move on to the next issue, who put it there?  That was an easy one, a no brainer really.  He didn’t have friends or family that came to visit, so it had to be someone on the hospital staff.  But who?  I don’t care.  If I would have to guess it would have to be the guy that flunked anatomy, twice.

The last thing that I had to figure out was what should I do?  Remove it and put the poor guy at risk of dying?  But if I leave it he could over dose, have a seizure, his toes would curl up so tight that it would block the blood flow to his brain and certain death. 

Then what if I took it off and his eyes filled with blood and he began to bleed internally thru his ears?  That would just be gross, then there would be a mess that would have to be cleaned up.  Not to mention the malpractice law suit. 

What do I do?  Should I go ask The Shadow?  Can’t do that, I have to show her that I can do this job.  I had to take a chance.  I made a decision. 

I put on a pair of gloves, got a paper towel and wiped off the goo.  Mr. Barns took a deep breath.  That scared me, so I made a note on his chart but signed someone else’s name and ran out of the room.

I found out later that Mr. Barns passed away.  Not from my actions on that cold spring day, but from the infection that formed in the untreated gash in his leg.