Word: knifings
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...believe it for a second. Would your grandmother ever say, "If people are ripping your face off, you have to rip their face off" (Pelosi's approach to handling attacks from Republicans)? How about "If you take the knife off the table, it's not very frightening anymore" (her explanation for why she won't let voters forget George W. Bush's unpopular Social Security proposal from last year...
...cops saw the situation and flooded in. They helped roll him back out - pretty quickly - and I was left alone for a moment in the X-ray room. A metal object glinted from under the table paper. It was a Leatherman Wave - a multipurpose tool that held a small knife along with a dozen other implements. Did I want to make a big deal of our tech being left alone with a possible weapon? They had the guy, she was safe and there was enough trouble around here tonight. I slipped the Leatherman into the pocket of my white coat...
...explaining that he needed surgery if he hoped to keep his leg. "Oh no, doc, not mine," he said. "I don't even know what they use those for." His eyes rolled toward the crowd of blue uniforms just outside the door. The Leatherman did have a knife in it and burglars with weapons do get in more trouble than burglars without them. He probably only used it as a jimmy though - and I couldn't quite live with the idea of keeping him in Sing Sing an extra five years on my account. A patient advocacy dilemma resolved itself...
...good thing or bad? Charles, the cops and I all crossed a line; it was a little bit of a rush for me. How about for them? Orthopedic surgeons are a practical lot. In fact, practical considerations probably "justified" swiping the knife. But couldn't one easily justify everything that night, including a ghetto kid's making a living as a burglar, or the tired cops leaving a potential weapon on him at the hospital, or even ramming him in a dangerous chase in the first place...
...Most educated, well-off folks in my doctors' world think our "cosmopolitan" viewpoint subsumes Charles'. We hardly think of other worlds or of the enormous complexity of medical ethics until we are forced to - as I am, every time I use that knife...