The happy couple strolled into my last remaining critical room about 2 hours before the end of my shift.
Headache. All day. Woke up with it. Not like usual migraine because he didn't have any vomiting. But he thought that as long as he was in the area because of his shopping trip to Target that he should get it checked out. No, he didn't take anything for the pain.
Wife was apparently in need of most of the attention and interrupted every question with observations about how her difficulties with pregnancy had caused her to come to the ER 4 times.
"They are breeding", I whispered, horrified, to my work partner.
"I noticed. She already told me 3 times that it is usually her who is seen for her problems of pregnancy".
Namely vomiting
Headache Man received Toradol and the complimentary head CT. Wife was quick to point out that she was allergic to Toradol, it made her nauseous. The two of them laughed and carried on in the room for awhile. Wife wiggle the IV tubing and touched the monitor a lot. For no apparent reason.
BEEP. I answered the call light. "His blood pressure is 170/120! That has to be really dangerous"
Me: "Yes, it can be. I will just check that again manually". 120/66.
Wife: "It dropped a lot, that can't be good!"
Me: "With the arm bent and tightened like that, it would be higher. I will reset the monitor to check it every 30 minutes instead". He told me about the transient nausea that had been caused by his wires allergy to Toradol. But he was apparently feeling fine as evidenced by his use of his cell phone to take selflies.
With a heroin overdose and a GI bleed, the People Who Care Committee were busy for the next 2 hours. Headache Man and his wife were apparently not getting the requisite attention they apparently felt they deserved as Wife was on the call light complaining about the high blood pressure, the lateness of the hour, the need to get home, the long wait, etcetera, etcetera. Wife sighed and complained and stood in the doorway, which drives me nuts but does noting to expedite the discharge process.
Headache Man got tired of complaining and decided to appeal to my intelligent rather than my non-existent caring side by revealing that he had an IQ 3 points shy of genius level.
I shared that little gem with my Work Partner.
"Wow. How did you keep a straight face?"
"Oh, years of practice nodding and smiling. And then I asked him if it was scaled for humans on this planet"
Work Partner: "Wow, Interplanetary Mensa material. Cool".
