Baptist Elevator

3:30 am with a psychiatric patient, what could go wrong?

"Five hours later I was sitting in a seminary exegetical class, having had a tetanus shot, and a bulky bandage on my right hand that had been wrapped in the emergency room."

Stuck in an Elevator

MO Baptist Elevator

My last two years of college and the first two years of seminary I worked as an orderly in two different hospitals. I performed such tasks as delivering bedpans and serving on the cardiac arrest team. Most of the years was spent working on the psychiatric wards. One shift, about three in the morning, I was called to the sixth floor to transport a woman to the psychiatric unit. She had had emergency surgery and the anesthesia, shall we say, “Went to her head!” When I arrived, she was in a wheelchair and was quite calm. I asked the nurse if she should be restrained to the chair, just in case. The nurse said, “No. She seems to be calm now.” I wheeled her into the elevator and punched “B” for basement (the psychiatric unit was in a separate building that could only be accessed through the basement hall). Between the third and fourth floor the woman shrieked like a banshee, jumped out of the chair, smashed the emergency stop button, threw off her gown, and began running around the elevator. I finally was able to get her into the wheelchair, throw her gown over her and hold her down with my right hand, while I tried to pull out the emergency stop button that she had jammed. It wouldn’t budge. But that wasn’t the biggest problem. While I was working at it, excruciating pain began to shoot up my right arm. She had my thumb in her mouth and was biting as hard as she could. Here I was, stuck in an elevator, between floors three and four, about 3:30 am, with a drugged woman. I rang the emergency bell and was informed it would be forty-five minutes before the repairman would arrive. Those forty-five minutes were the longest two months of my life. Five hours later I was sitting in a seminary exegetical class, having had a tetanus shot, with a bulky bandage on my right hand that had been wrapped in the emergency room.