Word: arming
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...this perfect little 9-year-old Russian boy, these were welcome words. I was doing something so painful to him yet he was quite comfortable - I was happy to be getting my job done. But soul-chilling doubt attacked as soon as I looked up from his broken arm into the young, innocent, and oh-so-stoned face of my patient...
...procedures without pain or writhing - but also without stopping the patient's heart or lungs. (Emergency rooms are not operating rooms; sedation can be risky, and Sasha had a full stomach, another danger.) But Melissa was her usual cheerful, omnicompetent self: "Don't worry, we can fix up that arm right here. We'll just use a touch of atropine, a little Versed for the nightmares and then the best drug there is for this sort of thing - good old Special...
...anyone who could, who could say something like "Look here, son, when I was in fourth grade, reading Crime and Punishment and doing analytic geometry, I tried getting high on ketamine and it seemed great, but let me tell you why it really wasn't"? I held Sasha's arm and watched his face as the plaster cast hardened. He was tripping, staring into the mystical middle distance, breathing deep and easy. Was this the face of the next Timothy Leary or Aldous Huxley? Was it my fault...
...model patient when he came to the office for follow-up. He claimed (perhaps a tiny bit evasively) that he didn't have nightmares and that he couldn't recall anything weird about the night we fixed his arm. Versed does cause amnesia - sometimes. But I like to think it was something already in there, more mysterious and far more powerful, that brought Sasha's head back to earth...
...materials, this should have been the moment when I rose to the challenge, mastered my fear, and remained changed forever. In real life, I shouted a few profanities as my grip on the rope slipped and the team leader was forced to lug me across the river with one arm...