IN THE EVENT OF AN EMERGENCY
I stab the scalpel through the skin and the painter bellows in pain. Blood rushes out
HUMANS shouldn’t climb onto roofs or ladders unless they have a harness or a set of wings. It’s day 13 of lockdown and the evening before Good Friday. A woman brings her husband to the ER because he’s spent the day drinking beer and painting the roof – probably more of the former than the latter.
No one was holding the ladder, so it overbalanced and he fell to the ground. He’s covered in paint and beer, an Arctic white splash on the bed with blue eyes and pink lips. The sharp smell of paint mixed with the beer is actually quite pleasant.
He has severe pain over the left side of his chest, where he landed against the upturned edge of the fallen ladder. After examining him, I’m worried that the painter has air or fluid collecting between his lung tissue and its lining.
This can happen with stabbings or gunshots to the chest, where air is sucked from the environment through the hole and into the relative negative pressure of the thoracic cavity.
It can also happen without an open wound, where broken ribs have punctured the lung.
But the chest X-ray comes back normal. There’s no blood or air collection and no broken bones visible, the radiologist tells me.
I send the patient down for a CT scan of his chest. Because I’m worried, and because I
