Nearly Headless

The best calls happen at night. There is the dark, the unknown, and the scary. This call was a combination of all those types of calls.

Sitting on a street corner, which is where we wait for calls, dispatch assigned my unit to a hemorrhage call. Nothing special, usually, about bleeding. It is actually one of the easier calls to work. Someone bleeds we give a band aide. The more they bleed the bigger the band aide. There is nothing like the KISS method in medicine. Keep it stupid simple.

While responding to the call, the only information we would get from dispatch was the address and that the calls’ girlfriend was bleeding, that was all the information call would give. We arrived on the street and in the block of the call; there were several houses dark, no front porch lights, and no one waving us down. My partner and I begin to do our search of the area. The boyfriend made the call from a payphone a few blocks away, so we began there. Hoping to find someone that would show us which house, we found nothing.

We drove back to the block. Two police cruisers pulled up to a house in the middle of the block. We asked the officers if they knew anything and one pointed out the house. One of the officers advised he was just there not an hour before for a domestic violence call.

The house was a small two-bedroom home like most on that block. Everything was dark. We knocked but no answer. The officers led the way into the house. They have the guns, not me, and they would not be in my way if I have to run. The two officers began searching the house and my partner and I followed. Being young and stupid, when the officer I was following went to the first bedroom, I went to the second.

I opened the door cautiously and began looking around. My eyes caught a glimpse of something shiny. Paramedics love shiny things. It was the hemorrhage. The blood was still dripping from her neck. Much slower that it was originally, I presume. With only a few pieces of flesh holding her head to her shoulders I did not even check for a pulse, I pronounced her dead. My partner scared that somehow she still had a pulse checked, guess what, she still did not have pulse.

This was one of my creepier calls and one I share a lot with patients of domestic violence, both male and female.

And the rest of the story… The police officer who state he was just there, gave the story that the female (now dead) was struck to the head with a coke bottle. When the officers began to arrest her boyfriend the female (now dead) refused to press charges or to testify. Frustrated that the female would not testify the officer did not want to waste time arresting the assailant. The got their word that they would behave that night and left without the arrest. The state where this happed has a law on the books that, even if the victim does not want to press charges, the police are to arrest the assailant of domestic violence calls. This time it could have changed a life.