Pastoral Care

Working the Monday after a long holiday weekend, and a full moon no less, was not a smart idea.  The ED, which has already been approaching record levels of overcrowding over the past few weeks, was once again bursting at the seams with everything from knee pain for the past 12 years to multiple trauma victims.

At one point, as I was standing in the triage bay trying to grab vitals on the line of ambulance patients that stretched out the doors, a disheveled young guy with a bright yellow tie and a thick black book tried to squeeze his way past the crowd of techs, RNs, and EMTs.  I recognized him as one of the new chaplain interns who had been paged to the ER multiple times over the past few hours for every major trauma that rolled in.  Looking down at the patient in front of him, a young woman strapped to a backboard after her car was T-boned by truck running a red light, he turned to me with pleading eyes and asked, "This isn't another major trauma, is it?"  I told him no, that she would only be a minor trauma.

His response: "Oh, thank Jesus."