Gold Medal Dive

Extremely busy shift last night with 7 major traumas in my first two hours.  Needless to say, the hallways were packed, CT was backed up, and I was constantly moving from one patient to the next.  On top of it all, I had just donated blood before the beginning of my shift, which added a general air of wooziness to the already hectic atmosphere.

At one point during the evening I decided to take a five minute break and moved over to a quieter area of the ER.  Collapsing into a chair, I started to check my email when I noticed a flesh-colored blur out of the corner of my eye.  Thinking I had experienced a hypovolemic hallucination, I turned in time to see what appeared at first glance to be a naked man fall out of the ceiling and land in the middle of this contained, five-bed treatment area.  

Letting out a few choice expletives in surprise, I ran over and found a 20-something year old male (who thankfully was not naked and had on a pair of shorts) lifting himself off the floor as blood trickled down his forehead.  I grabbed some gauze and applied pressure to the lac while a handful of nurses, a resident, and the attending ran over to see what the hell had happened.

Apparently the patient had been brought in for a drug overdose, needed to go to the bathroom, and with both side rails up on the stretcher, decided to dive head first off the end of his stretcher.  

For his effort, he won himself a board and collar, a head and neck CT scan, an X-shaped laceration in the middle of his forehead, and 9.7 from the American judges... but only a 6.5 from the East Germans.