Teenagers

Quiet day. Few cars on the roads. Doesn’t sound like many transfers going out. I was expecting to get hammered today, but it already has the feel of a holiday. People off work, staying home or if they are going anywhere -- going to the grocery store.

We do a couple calls. An elderly Hispanic woman with a high blood sugar and an elderly nun with a case of sudden dementia. I speak Spanish on the first call, and because the hospitals are slow, I get lots of time to have Spanish conversations with my professors and professoras – the techs and clerks at the hospital who are Hispanic, and who are often to busy to talk to me at length.

For lunch I go to El Mercado, where I am planning to get roast pork, but my friend there tells me they have “pavo” -- turkey today so I get pavo and morro, which is the Dominican yellow rice with peas. It’s very good.

We do a call for a 14-year-old girl in a suburban psychiatrist's office who has been spitting at her mother and the doctor and threatening violence. There are three cops there. “I’m not going,” she says. She swears at her mother a couple times, but when the cop explains how it is, she ends up going. Once she is in the ambulance, she just curls into a fetal position and cries.

Next call is for a 14-year-old girl in a housing project. She has been kicking out windows and threatening her mother and the mental health workers with a knife. There are eight cops there. She doesn’t want to go to the hospital and swears at them. They explain how it’s going to be. She’s not buying it. She continues to resist. I end up giving her 2 of Ativan and 5 of Haldol. She keeps fighting and kicking, so we have to restrain her as well. But once she is in the ambulance, she calms down and drifts off to sleep.

Teenagers.

Last call is to a distant town for a lady in a nursing home with a broken hip, fell a couple days ago, confirmed by X-Ray. While the nurse is leading us up to the room in the elevator, she castigates a teenage nurse's aide. "So you've gone and gotten Mrs. Sindlinger into a tizzy. You're supposed to let her win when you play BINGO. It's in her care plan."

The aide looks like a teen being scolded unfairly by her mother. She looks down at the floor and rolls her eyes.

"Next time let her win!"

"So the fix is in," I say, knowingly.

When we leave the elevator, I see the aide stick her tongue out at the older nurse's back.