My first rotation after I graduated from medical school was peds house. That is inpatient pediatrics in the vulgar tongue. As a newly-minted MD, my job was to take care of really sick children who were in the hospital.
This wasn’t just some Podunk community hospital. This was the Battlestar — a sprawling Level 1 trauma center in the inner city. Folks came from far and wide to seek our services. In this case, that meant that these kids were legit sick. I was frankly terrified.
There is a hierarchy to the medical staff in a big teaching hospital. The rank system is almost as sacrosanct as that of the military. The trappings are obvious if you know where to look.
A .357 Magnum revolver is a formidable combat tool.
My Very First Day
Medical students are the lowest of the low — think whale dung in the Marianas Trench. They wear short white coats that end around the base of their buttocks. RLDs (Real-Live Doctors) wear long white coats.
When it was time to pick white coats for graduation, I had four styles to choose from. I told the guy I didn’t care about belts, buttons or lapels. I just wanted the longest coat they had. I wanted folks to know I was no longer a medical student from a slant range of 500 meters.
Anyway, it was my very first day as an actual doctor, and I was on call in the children’s hospital. I got paged to a patient’s room stat. I arrived to find this tiny little kid having a grand mal seizure.
Upon my arrival, the accumulated crowd of distraught family, nurses and sundry support staff parted like the Red Sea. Thank the Lord, the doctor’s here.
Now, understand, I had never before even seen a grand mal seizure. I had read about them, to be sure, but that’s a pretty significant departure from actually gazing upon a terrified mom clutching this tiny purple kid who is flopping around like a beached carp.
With all eyes on me, I retrieved my laminated dosing card, authoritatively inquired regarding the kid’s weight, and calculated a weight-based dose of Ativan on the fly.
One of the floor nurses pulled up the medication and pushed it into the kid’s IV. We all waited expectantly. Then, the kid stopped shaking. I took the win. By the end of that month, I had two kids seizing at once and still answered a phone call.
‘Twas a Dark and Stormy Night…
Our hero was a retired law enforcement officer with decades of practical experience. A friend was whiling away a delightful evening swapping war stories with the man. The conversation inevitably wandered to, “What was your most exciting call-out?”
This guy had been a rookie cop. Not only was he a rookie cop, he was on his very first patrol alongside an experienced veteran. They got a call to report to a domestic disturbance.
A domestic disturbance is a 10-80. These things range from raised voices on one end of the spectrum to a full-bore firefight on the other. This poor guy and his partner knocked on the door to see what was amiss.
Regardless of the circumstances, in times of stress, you tend to fall back on your training and experience. Public domain.
The Bad Guy burst out of the house guns a-blazin’. The rookie cop’s senior partner caught a round and was out of the fight. The kid reached for his service weapon, in those days a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver, and did what he had been trained to do — draw, front sight center of mass, and squeeze.
So, this law enforcement officer actually shot a man on his first time out in the real world in uniform. He had been a real cop for all of eight hours.
The training that he had undergone prior to that moment served him well, and both he and his partner survived the deadly encounter. He never again had to fire on another perp despite decades of active service. The system worked as it was supposed to.
Ruminations
The human mind is a most curious thing. Our brains weigh about 3 pounds and are mostly fat, yet they’re the most complex mechanical contrivance in the known universe. It is a uniquely-capable learning computer that inculcates experiences to shape future behavior. Subject this remarkable device to the right stimuli, and it can eventually pilot the space shuttle.
It’s a weird old world that gets weirder by the day. With distressing frequency, Americans are pitted against Americans over political, religious or philosophical issues. In such a toxic milieu, folks often behave poorly. That’s the reason I carry a gun whenever I’m not asleep or in the shower.
Whether it is a little kid having a seizure or some armed redneck lunatic on a bender, when life goes all pear-shaped, you will inevitably fall back on your training and experience.
Tactical shooting is fun. Those who fundamentally disagree have either never done it properly or are too fragile to survive anything more arduous than a transient power outage. However, it is also important. Stock up on cheap blasting bullets, then go burn them like your life depends on it. You just never know when you might need to slip your big boy pants on.