My true and funny but serious Naval Hospital story

Just thought I'd share one of the more memorable things to happen to me in my 6 years as a Navy Hospital Corpsman. This happened while on shift at the Oakland Naval Hospital back in '95 or '96 before its closure.

One night while I was working in the ER, we had Shore Patrol (SP) (our version of military police) from Alameda bring in a sailor for what we thought would be a normal, boring competency for duty examination...boy were we wrong.

When the patrol car pulled into our ambulance lot, I went out to assist in escorting the patient to his assigned room and getting him checked in. When the one SP opened the back door of the patrol car, my patient swung his legs out and sat in the car for a moment getting his bearings, which was reasonable considering the state that he was in that we would find out later that night. Seeing that the SPs didn't seem overly concerned about him while he was sitting there, hands cuffed behind his back, I was not on my guard either.

For this following part, keep in the back of your mind that I was very much on the heavy side for being in the Navy at 5' 9" and 210 lbs after a couple of knee surgeries and did not and still don't like running.

While the SPs and I were standing there waiting for my patient to be ready for us to take him into the ER, he suddenly bolted out of the car between myself and the one SP, taking off through the parking lot. Surprised at this, the SPs just stood there looking at the guy running away. Seeing the SPs just standing there in disbelief, my fat and out of shape arse decided it was time to give chase since he now had close to a 10 second head start. After a couple of hundred yards, I finally caught up to this guy in a darkened parking lot off to the side of the hospital. This is where I'm glad I wasn't this kid, since with my rather large frame, I proceeded to perform a flying tackle on this skinny kid probably weighed a good 60 or 70 pounds less than I did, causing him to land face first on the asphalt without his hands to catch his fall, all while having an extra 210 pounds on his back. (Note to others....don't make a fat man run...just like it takes a while for us to get up to speed, it also takes a lot more to get us stopped once we get going, which will usually be painful for whomever causes our sudden deceleration.) After my attempt at flight, I picked up the guy from the ground and started walking him back to the ER a couple of hundred yards away....and NOW the SPs decide to come meet me while bringing him back. So while I was previously having a nice and slow shift in the ER, playing Spades with a few of the other Corpsmen, this incident made me a bit angry between the patient having made the fat man run and the SPs not doing their job.

Well, anyways, we get him into his room and get him handcuffed to the gurney (hospital bed for you laymen), get him checked into the hospital, and start getting his scrapes and cuts taken care of, all while we were also doing his competency for duty exam.

As we were taking care of this guy, the story of why he was there came out. He was supposed to be standing watch on his ship but for some reason decided that he'd rather go to the Grateful Dead concert in San Francisco that night where he proceeded to imbibe not only alcohol, but also the other "delicacies" present at the concert which are definitely not allowed in the military. For some reason, he decided that it would be a good idea to smoke some weed, after which he thought it would be an even more brilliant idea to take some acid.

In the meantime, while he was at the concert, his Commanding Officer (having heard about his unauthorized absence), while understandably mad, decided to add on to our genius' pile of charges (which at the time would only have been the unauthorized absence due to their not know about the drugs as of yet) by having the ship move forward a few feet and back again which added on a charge of missing ships movement (a huge screw up in the Navy).

And back to the ER now...

After we ran the competency exam on the intrepid sailor which was obviously failed, as we were getting ready to discharge him into the custody of the SPs, he began complaining of chest pain. With the chest pain, we now had to run him through further testing to rule out any heart issues. One of the things we routinely did on chest pain patients was chest x-rays. After the x-rays were processed and brought to the ER for us to examine, we first looked at the lateral (side) film which was normal. However, to our surprise the PA (frontal view) film had a crucifix in the center of his chest. Immediately we went to the patient to make sure he was wearing a necklace with a cross on it...he wasn't. When I asked him about the necklace, his response was totally unexpected. He said that the devil was out to get him and he wanted Jesus close to his heart. This bright and shining example of a sailor had decided to swallow his cross, which had then gotten lodged in his esophagus. Needless to say, the moron did not get discharged for transport to the brig and instead had to have emergency surgery performed to remove his form of protection from Satan, which of course added to his already serious pile of charges.

While I've been out of the Navy since '96, I still occasionally think back to this event and tell this story to friends. The part I find amusing is imagining what it was seeing my bulk take flight and use this guy as my landing pad. The remainder is pretty serious though, especially thinking about what the impact of me hitting him and him hitting the pavement may have done with that crucifix stuck in his esophagus and how easily that could have even more life threatening.