Criminal Minds

The emergency department at any local hospital gets very exciting after 8 pm. Ask me, I know. I volunteer there Sunday nights 8-10 pm. Why? To build my immune system and strengthen my college resume of course! And also for the free coffee. Free beverages are always a plus. Free anything is always exciting. By now I have collected 15 (unused) hospital masks, 11 blue surgical gloves, and more than 40 sparkly Mickey mouse stickers. Pretty soon I could start a store. I hope you'll all come to the grand opening.

But there's more happening here in the ED than just stickers. All kinds of fascinating characters show up here after the sun sets. The most interesting would have to be the criminals. The potheads and alcoholics that come in handcuffed accompanied by a decorated officer. The criminals can be classified into two distinct categories. First we have the "loudies" who are usually either kicking, screaming, or yelling profanities at anything with a pulse. The other category is the "silents". These are the much less interesting but easier to deal with group. The silents are either meek and tired out or drugged up and staring into space with bloodshot eyes. Although they don't attract the same kind of attention as the loudies, they have a certain charm of their own. It’s like a guessing game. You always have to wonder: Are they on meth? Cocaine? Can they even talk? Do they know where they are?

The officers who wheel them in are no less entertaining. Most of them are small-town cops and bringing in these people to the hospital is probably the most action they get all week. They come in with their beefy hands on the patients' shoulders (or, if it's a loudie, pinning the patients' arms down) and puffing their chests. In their best deep movie-cop impersonation voice they tell us all about what's "going on" with the patient, which ends up being extremely inaccurate 80% of the time.

So there we sit, us emergency department volunteers and listen as the cops tell us all about their heroic escapades, complete with hand gestures, jumping around, and play-by-plays. We usually let this go on for 3 minutes before gently interrupting to remind them the reason they're here... The criminal patient.

It's around this time that either the slightly embarrassed cops or the fed up handcuffed criminal will (finally) tell us the nature of the emergency. And that's the end of the whole episode. Until the patient decides to make a run for it... But that's a story for another day.

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