The Room

“Dr.Grasso,” came the shout. I hate shouting across the room. “Dr.Grasso,” this time louder. Then finally a blood curdling shout “I need you in eight now!!” It wasn’t like I was far away mind you. Hell, the whole ER was little more than the size of the produce section at Quick Check, but when Kathy A yelled it was going to be bad. Sure enough as I came around the curtain, there was Kathy and an ER tech cutting away the last of a middle aged guy’s shirt, tie and underwear in one motion. I didn’t need the cardiac monitor which hadn’t been connected, to know he was in trouble. He had “the look.” A kind of blue black hue that was the preferred color of souls on their way to the pearly gates. “History Kathy?” I said as I grabbed electrodes to attach to his chest. “No history,” she said, “I didn’t get that far. He got to the front desk, said the magic words ‘chest pain’ and collapsed on the stretcher when security brought him in.” Thus begins a look inside the workings of a suburban Emergency Room. From high drama life and death to mundane minor health complaints,the book will give the reader a real look at the Emergency Medicine profession.The stories are woven around a fictionalized romance in order to prevent the book from being a continuous series of "war stories."