h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

slouching toward graceland

Posted Aug 13, 2002

It was one of those August nights that live in memory till the cool breezes of October blow them from consciousness. The sweat on the back of the neck had a stale smell even though you had showered only a few hours ago. The heat at midnight seemed as intense as at high noon and air-conditioning was only a marginal relief. It was even worse when you had to be at work at eleven p.m. Your car was a pile of inert junk; there was no mass transit and the few buses available had quit running. And so you had to walk the five city blocks. It seemed like an old canard that last winter when you had faced the same walk the temperature had been five degrees below zero. So cold that the front of your legs froze to the point of frost bite under the standard issue white uniform pants, paper-thin from too much industrial laundry. Unfortunately, the sheer pants were not much help during the heat either. They showed the sweat clearly to the point of making them transparent. This was an embarrassment, especially when procrastinating about the laundry forced you to wear the loud underwear your mom gave you last Christmas. You dared not go without any, like your old hippy days. This might not have been a problem if you had been working in a lonely unoccupied building, but you worked as an orderly in the largest private hospital in the world. Further, in order for you to sign in, you had to pass through the well-lit and usually crowded lobby.

August humidity sucked the life out of you in general, but on this night even more so. Because the job you were heading for was a mind-numbing kaleidoscope of pain, blood and human misery, occasionally punctuated by periods of staggering boredom. The agony was only compounded by the fact that you were late. The culprit was your alarm clock and its existentialist outlook that cemented its refusal to once again wake you, except on its own terms. This wasn't an excuse the dragon of a nurse administrative supervisor would never buy.

Sean woke up in a sweat as a half-remembered dream shocked him into consciousness. The numbers on the smug face of the alarm clock, self-righteous in its decision not to ring again, pushed him from the bed like a giant hand. Making it to the toilet just in time, he relieved his bladder, which he was only now acutely aware of. Rushing, he brushed his teeth with one hand and pulled on his uniform with the other. Leaping into his shoes he grabbed a soda from the cavernously empty fridge. Empty, that is, except for a few fast-food condiments, an old empty pizza box, two cans of soda and a lone beer. Pushing out of the front door of his apartment, directly across from the elevator doors, he fed the fish with his free hand and then finished buckling his pants. Fortunately, the elevator door opened as his fly went up and a pretty red headed female neighbor came out of the elevator at the same speed, nearly colliding with him. However, there was still a remnant of his spectacular underwear visible. She smiled at his dilemma and averted her eyes as he rearranged his flash of colorful under garment. She aided him by turning off the apartment light he had neglected and closing the door he had left open in his rush. He thanked her as the door to the elevator shut and she gave him a look that, had he noticed, might have prompted him to call in sick. He finished the soda before the elevator made the ground floor. Then as he exited he made a three-point deposit of the can in the wastebasket near the security guard's empty station.

The outside of the back door was partially blocked by a blond lady with a large bag. This brought him down to a slow gallop. She had just inserted the electronic key into the slot as a man, unseen, came up from behind her. Sean, though rushing, had his full attention on the gorgeous woman and opened the door for her. It opened with a thump, knocking the man against the wall. Sean had only just seen him out the corner of his eye. He barely noted the man, preoccupied as he was with the perfume and tight sweater of the blond lady. He apologized half-heartedly to the guy as he held the door for the lady. The man, dazed, stumbled off into the night, his would-be mugging attempt unwittingly foiled. Though he didn't know it, by an orderly in a hurry to get to a job where one of his major duties was cleaning bedpans. The irony was totally lost on both Sean and the mugger, who was busy fighting off a major concussion.

Walking rapidly through the parking lot Sean jumped over a small fence that enclosed it. He cut through the front yard of an apartment complex where the clientele were all young women who seemed to never leave their apartments. Their sources of income were a mystery to almost everyone but the police and the troop of men that seemed to visit often. Cutting across the street, he was almost hit by an off duty security guard driving his own version of the speed limit. Sean waved at him but used only one finger. Sweat was pouring down his back. The transparency of his trousers was becoming obvious. This came to his attention when one of the "girls", returning home from an infrequent excursion out, whistled at him. He merely quickened his pace, zipping past the old folks home. One of the night owl older ladies, sitting on a balcony, tried to copy the whistle of the "girl" but was unable to accomplish it. The sweat was leaving a virtual river behind him. He trudged on till he was past the used car dealership in sight of the hospital. Dodging traffic across Union Avenue he leaped the curb, cutting across the large expanse of green that was the front yard of the Baptist Memorial Hospital, Memphis. He was just in time to avoid a helicopter landing at the heliport near the corner of the enormous lawn just across from the entrance. There seemed to be a lot of activity going on in the hospital that evening, but he was in too big a hurry to sign in before the dragon became aware of his tardiness to notice.

Sean passed through the Union entrance and was met by a blast of frigid air from the hospital's over achieving air conditioning system that all but froze his pants solid. The goose bumps on his body were the size of actual geese as he ran up the escalator. A mélange of hospital smells assailed his nostrils as he sprinted down the hall past the cafeteria and the main elevator banks. There was that omnipresent hospital smell that everyone notices. But underlying that, were a myriad of subtle under tones that included everything from the cafeteria's blue plate special to the dirty laundry baskets and its plethora of odors. These could only be sensed by those with the "well educated? olfactory glands of individuals with constant exposure.

As he approached the hallway leading to the nursing office and the sign-in area, he ran into a group of student nurses who giggled at his sweat-drenched persona. The dragon just missed him as he ducked into an open doorway. His sign in was rapid and he pushed to get to the floor where he was stationed and took the calls for his services on other floors.

In the daytime there were orderlies on every floor. The administration's view was that the patients were all asleep on the eleven to seven shift and therefore the workload was less. Hence, one orderly could take care of more than one floor. This, in Sean's opinion, was bull. But there was no convincing them otherwise. When any of them were patients in the hospital they always got VIP service regardless of the size of the staff. Their solution to patient complaints regarding service was to chastise the staff and goad them into moving faster. The notion that more staff was needed never occurred to them or their bottom line. He had always wanted to ask them, what if their bottom line ever had wait an hour to sit on a bedpan while fighting the effects of a powerful laxative?

As he approached the nurses' station the chest high desk, thankfully, hid his sweat-induced sideshow. Though the sweat had stopped and now he only needed his frozen slacks to thaw and dry. There were three assignment sheets on the orderlies' clipboard waiting on him when he arrived. He was noticing that everybody he saw was somewhat wired. However, for the graveyard shift, this was not unusual as the "natives" (staff) were usually caffeine drenched. This was, often, the case for the visitors too. Well, those who weren't among the multitudes sleeping three deep in the visitor's lounge.

His first assignment was perhaps his least favorite and made for a literal interpretation of graveyard for his shift. Once, he actually sat down and did a gross calculation. The estimated figure astounded him. In the twelve years he had been working as an orderly, he had seen and/or attended to over three thousand dead or dying patients. There had been one patient who actually told him he was going to die and at that moment slumped into Sean's arms, dead. No amount of CPR would bring him back. Sean later revealed to close friends that he had felt a strange mist pass though him as the man fell forward. As a rule he was no great believer in the after life, but he was not as skeptical as others in his field either. There had been a lot of talk in the pop media concerning near death and out of body experiences at the time of resuscitation. So as an experiment, he would look up in the air during a code situation, smile and wave. But no one who had come back had ever mentioned seeing him do so.

One day as he was helping an elderly lady down the hall he overheard a visiting teenager's smug comment on getting old, repeating the old saw, "Live fast, die young and leave a good looking corpse." Sean sniped at him with a vengeance, "Never seen one, Sonny Jim, not a single one, no matter how young. And besides, you passed that window of opportunity long ago." The old lady snatched the backward baseball cap off the stunned teenager, put it on her head and patted Sean on the arm.

Sean entered the deceased's room, pushing a stretcher with a morgue pack on top (a large brown paper bag, held closed by a thick rubber band, containing a shroud, blue plastic diaper, standard hospital gown, six steel safety pins and a toe tag). He was accompanied a manic nursing assistant. The nursing assistant seemed anxious to say something to him. But the presence of the mourning family in the hall outside and the recently departed lying on the bed, prevented her from talking. She was shaking as badly as the bereaved wife. Sean knew her, and while not surprised at the intensity of her reaction, he sensed there was more to it. Not quite encroaching on his consciousness yet was the electricity pervading the air ever since he had entered the hospital. It was palpable. The former patient was a small man, so after she leaned him over while Sean cleaned the backside, Sean let her leave the room. He could finish the necessary details by himself.

The scene was unusually grisly, as the patient had died of cirrhosis of the liver. In the final stages before death, the patient had projectile vomited blood. It went high enough to hit the ten-foot ceiling and the walls on three sides of the bed. There was a foul stench that was all too familiar to Sean. He finished cleaning the blood off the body and dressed it in the hospital gown. The charge nurse had said the family did not want to view the loved one. So he laid out the shroud, a large heavy rectangular muslin sheet, in a diagonal manner on the stretcher and placed a large blue diaper on the sheet. Then he lifted the body over gently on to the stretcher. Sean folded the shroud so that the body was completely covered. Next, he took the large metal safety pins and fastened it together down the middle till the body was snug and secure in the shroud. He then attached the customary toe tag to a pin just under the chin of the body, (no one had put them on the toe in years). He covered all this with another sheet so it looked like a pile of laundry and rolled the stretcher to the door. Afterwards he buzzed the nurses' station to retrieve his errant nursing assistant. He needed her to serve as look out, to make sure that none of the family or other visitors were around. Once the halls were clear he and the nursing assistant pushed the body to the service elevator and then down to the second floor morgue. The nursing assistant volunteered to go down to the admissions desk to get the key. When she returned they entered the foyer of the morgue where the drawers that held the bodies awaiting autopsy or out of state funeral pick up were kept. Locals awaiting a funeral home pick-up were usually left in the room. His passenger was one of the former group, hence his trip to the morgue. As Sean opened the door, the cold stench like the breath out of a slaughterhouse invaded his nostrils. He had grown used to it, however the nursing assistant almost threw up. He pulled out the cold metal tray and they easily placed the last earthly remains there. Sean pushed the tray back into the space, closed the door to the box and put the tear off part of the toe tag with the occupants name on the outside of the door.

As they waited for the elevator to return them to their workstations, the nursing assistant said to Sean. "To bad about Elvis."

A curious look passed over his face and he said. "What, is he up on eighteen again?" He was referring to the frequent visits the King had made to the hospital in the last few months.

"No. He's dead."

In a knee jerk fashion Sean stared back at the morgue door. Following his gaze, the nursing assistant anticipated his question. "The body is still in the emergency room." He was taken aback, but not truly shocked. Elvis' pharmaceutical habits were an open secret in the hospital. On more than one occasion recently Elvis had experienced an "episode" on the stage in Las Vegas. He would then be flown back to Memphis and admitted to either the eighteenth or nineteenth floor's VIP suite in Baptist Hospital. The suite came complete with his very own nurse administrative supervisor on duty, who slept in the adjoining room of the suite. Some of the nurses who had been on duty during other "visits" had told Sean that she was there to make sure the King got his "medication" when he asked for it. They told him that most nurses were more concerned with their licenses being revoked than his wishes. This too was an open secret. As if by coincidence, the "angel of mercy" in question got a free brand new Cadillac of her choice. Those who wished to keep their jobs never made a connection. The fact that Elvis had numerous drugs in his body at the time of death attested to the efficiency of the efforts of his medical team. They saw to it that he was never deprived of "medication".

(Editor's Note: For those who think he is still alive or have forgotten how Elvis died: it was from heart failure (according to the post mortem). Of course that was after taking enough drugs to bring down a charging rhino, falling face down in his own vomit and aspirating (inhaling) it. If he hadn't died as result of all that, the autopsy surely would have finished the job. For the record the King is DEAD. <&gt

When Sean had gotten back to the station, there was another orderly there helping him to pick up the slack in the duty roster. It was Sean's favorite pal big Mike. He was the three hundred fifty pound, six foot three, African-American guy that Sean had almost kissed once. A really big male patient in D.T.'s had cornered Sean and had him pinned up against the wall. With a metal bedpan in one hand and the broken arm of a chair in the other, he was about to part Sean's hair when Mike walked in. The man took just one look at Mike, put down his weapons and sat down on what was left of the broken chair. Sean almost jumped in his arms right there but settled for buying him a coke and candy bar instead. Mike was utterly delighted that Sean hadn't kissed him. It was not that Sean wasn't a pretty big guy himself, and he had taken care of more than one patient that had gone off the deep end. But Mike had a persona that demanded respect, though his size did not hurt the effect. Sean was sure that if Mike had only been five two and a hundred pounds he would have gotten the same respect.

Sean and Mike exchanged pleasantries. Mike told him that he had finished the small stuff and that there was nothing to do till they called for the regular scheduled time to turn the patients. Every two hours the comatose patients, and others that could not move, had to be turned from one side to the other side to prevent bed sores (large gaping holes that appeared when the bony prominence ate though the flesh from beneath due to heat, moisture and in activity). They also discussed the news of the moment. The area Sean had just left was now filled with security and police, as the King was about to have his autopsy. Sean heard nothing else about the autopsy the rest of the night, just the usual rehash of the scuttlebutt concerning the King's extra curricular activities.

Sean was called over to the service ward to replace an orderly who had been injured and complete his night's work. It was called the charity ward but there was never anything charitable about it. Patients were charged premium prices and given substandard services and facilities. The only difference was that the patient paid as much as he could and the state of origin paid the rest. Having turned thirty patients (service patients on the whole were usually the sicker than the average) and changing fifteen beds down to the mattresses, Sean then returned another patient in D.T.'s back to his restraints. After running the "monsters" out of the poor man's room, Sean dropped into a chair in the break room. One irony, again totally lost on Sean, was that one of the bed change patients should have looked familiar to him. It was the would-be mugger who had just been admitted for a severe concussion. Normally, he would have been taken to the Med, the hospital where indigents usually were taken, but due to over crowding and the severity of the injury, he was here instead. Since Sean hadn't noticed him much at the time of the incident, now he was just another body in Sean's personal sea of chaos.

Eating lunch in itself was always a challenge at the hospital. The first obstacle was, when do you eat? They had to give you a lunch break, it was the law, but the timing could be critical. Or, you had to develop a really strong stomach. Sean had developed a fairly resilient stomach but it had its limits. After a particularly nasty chore one might find it difficult and in the hospital there were plenty of those. Second, what do you eat? Depending on your gastrointestinal fortitude, this was a serious consideration. Sean had rarely had problems with this aspect. Yet, as in most cases, there was the exception. One night a new girlfriend had thought to surprise him with her culinary prowess and prepared a gourmet meal for him. Her choice had been curry chicken. On the whole, a tasty dish and a spicy one, which was not a problem. He had, however, a slight problem with color and consistency. It is chicken chopped into chunks covered in a lovely greenish yellow curry sauce. This was a little too much, as many of the nastier jobs Sean ran into on an almost hourly basis resembled this particular dish. He ate as much as he could and gave the rest to big Mike who could have eaten barbequed spare ribs and raw liver at an autopsy. That night Sean settled for a pack of Twinkies and a diet cola. Tonight he was safe, a cold roast beef sandwich and two chocolate chip cookies had been purchased in the cafeteria by a nurse who had a crush on him and there was some left over free milk from the fridge.

As he sat back to enjoy the final cookie and the last couple of swallows of milk, a series of movements from out of the window on the street below got his attention. The window looked out over an off street that went behind the hospital. Engaging his interest
was the opening of a little known back door to a garage entrance that he had never noticed before. Out of the door emerged a gleaming white hearse. As it pulled down the street Sean thought to himself, "Elvis has left the building."

It was about three a.m. when he got back to work. The time of the morning when time itself stops, but most often the patients didn't. Sometimes Sean got a chance to read a little of a novel or scribble a few words in his journal. This night was not one of those quiet nights and he had to dive back into the whirlwind. He did one head to toe prep, shaving the patient from the top of the ears to his feet, and four patient's "enemas till clear" (that was usually three enemas per patient till the water that returned was clear. Next came one code where he had to do the CPR chest compressions. Procedure stated he was supposed to share the responsibility with the nurses and doctors, but when you were low man on the totem pole you had to take the lion share of the duty. Only having to run the blood gas samples to the lab on the opposite side of the hospital relieved the strain. This occurred only because the long trip to the lab was more repugnant to his "superiors".

Seven o'clock found him leaning against a bathroom door waiting for an elderly man to finish a bowel movement that was going at a geologic pace. It was seven twenty when he hit the door to the outside of the hospital. As he left breaking the almost vacuum seal of the door, there was an in rush of peace and quiet, which was quite disconcerting but welcome. He had felt this many times and this time it was reminiscent of his reaction on leaving the theater after seeing The Exorcist. The trip home was a blur. When he walked into his apartment, he fell out of his uniform, slipped into the shower, stumbled into bed after "killing" the lone beer and fell to sleep. Ashe drifted off, he thought about getting better acquainted with the redhead he had almost bumped into at the elevator.

The weeks that followed were weird as he saw the maelstrom that surrounded the death of the King. People were stealing things from the hospital. Even the commemo-rative plaques that were in the rooms Elvis had occupied had been pried off the walls at least three times. One orderly even stole the hospital's logo covered sheets and cut them up and sold them as if they had been His. Sean thought that sooner or later someone would be selling the spare parts from the autopsy. The piece de resistance for him was a patient he met about three weeks later. She was a writer for a major news magazine who was in for physical and nervous exhaustion. After a brief conversation she revealed the cause for her condition. It seemed she was having trouble acquiring any inside information concerning the death of the King. He laughed as he turned to go back to work and said, "You didn't ask the right people."

Discuss this Journal entry [1]

Latest reply: Aug 13, 2002