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The Question
San Francisco, a teen girl, and the medical intern
Hers was the first stomach I ever pumped. I stood by the semiconscious teenager’s head and chanted under my breath “In with the good, out with the bad.” With an experienced doctor walking me through it, I had inserted the tube. I snaked it through her nose and ran it all the way down into her stomach. The stomach full of a mishmash of capsules and tablets. Now I was pouring a black slurry of charcoal into the tubing, letting it rest a minute, then drawing her stomach contents out. As I look back, the interaction reminds me of a later patient. The man roused himself during what docs call a “procedure” and asked, “Who convened this satanic coven?” Who, indeed?
Outside the Emergency Department, through the wide doors, other girls gossiped and flirted in the dying San Francisco light. They were enjoying life and looking forward to the future. Not this one. Like most females, she opted for pills in her quest to flee this world, but it was our job that night to thwart her efforts. We were successful. The next day, at morning rounds, tiny pin point red spots dotted her pale brown face, reminders of her violent retching from the night before. But the young woman was alive.
I saw her the following week in the clinic, and she became one of my assigned patients. We wereas congenial as possible for a 15-year-old poor city girl and…
