McDreary and the Convicts
Coby fell onto a subway platform and we got to spend six memorable hours in the LA County hospital's ER.
I have a running joke that everybody loves Coby. Whenever someone from my life meets him for the first time, they will lean over and shout-whisper to me, “how’d you find this guy?” or “wow he really settled for you?” My favorite was a few years back when my friend’s husband, who had never met Coby before that night, told me: “I was worried about you in college. Always dated assholes, but Coby’s a unicorn. Not sure how you did it, but I’m proud of you.” Thanks, Geoff. I’m proud of me too.
There is only one human more universally loved than my Coby Jo, and its his best friend JR. JR is truly a dream friend. He’s one of the nicest, most genuine humans I’ve ever met. Funny and clever. Has a laugh that begs you to tell a joke. He’s playful, fun, and loves hard. And don’t get me started on his amazing (and tall and gorgeous) wife and their two incredible children. Their oldest, Ty, briefly made me rethink my decision not to have kids. If I could guarantee my children would be like Ty and Gibson, I’d have them.
Coby and JR have been thick as thieves since the 6th grade, so it’s no surprise that shortly after Coby and I started dating, we traveled down to the LA area to visit the Ranells. I was more nervous to meet JR than I was when I met Coby’s parents. I’d heard so much about this guy that it was like meeting a celebrity.
It was 2012. Ty was something like 2 or 3 years old and the gregarious ball of sunshine that is Gibson (my fellow Aquarius) wasn’t yet born. Coby and I were young, in love, and in LA with friends. It was a wild weekend that started out with a fun trip into the city with JR and their friends Eric and Nick. That was, until Coby decided to take a short cut down into the subway. The straight way. Like straight down. Off the stairs and directly onto the platform below. By falling.
We were on our way back to JR’s and needed to take the subway to get to the Pasadena train. JR deftly hopped onto the railing, sliding all the way down the stairs and onto the platform below. Seeing this, Coby jumped up on the railing and instantly disappeared. The love of my life had been standing next to me one minute, and was gone the next.
I heard a “thud” and a low moan. I think I screamed. Coby’s shorts had caught on the railing and instead of sliding, he’d lost his balance and careened over the edge and onto the platform, about ten feet below us. He laid on his side, crumpled on the concrete.
Nick and Eric rushed ahead of me and followed JR around the corner. I found myself kneeling over Coby’s body. His eyes were wide but distant.
“Hey, buddy. You’re okay. Don’t move,” JR said. Coby continued to look around, not meeting my eyes. Eric and JR exchanged a few hushed words before JR stood and dialed 911.
“What’s your name?” Eric asked.
“Coby Jo Weidenbach.”
“Who do you love?”
Finally, as if he hadn’t noticed me until that moment, Coby’s eyes met mine. “Lindsey Jean.” I bent down and grabbed his hand, squeezing gently.
“Hey handsome. You took a tumble,” I said much calmer than I felt.
“I fell,” he muttered, almost smiling.
“The ambulance will be here soon,” JR reported.
I don’t remember how they got Coby up the stairs and into the loud ambulance, but I do remember that JR and I got to ride with him. Eric and Nick took the train home.
We held hands as the EMTs asked him questions and checked his vitals. Thankfully, the only pain that Coby reported was in his right shoulder.
“I’ve just separated my AC joint,” he reported to the EMTs, who seemed not to put too much faith in that assessment, and rightfully so. Shock is a good liar. You can think you’re fine when really, you’re bleeding internally or have head trauma. And Coby was definitely in shock.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“The LA County hospital.”
When we first arrived, they wheeled Coby’s prone body into an actual hospital room. There was already one person in the room and another bed sat empty to Coby’s right.
A young, blonde man walked in with a clipboard not long after we arrived. He introduced himself but like any human with undiagnosed ADHD, I forgot it immediately. Instead of asking him for his name, or simply reading the name tag, I decided to become memorable. I gave him a nickname.
Dr. MrDreary corrected me the first time I called him this, but then quickly gave up and decided to play along. It had probably been a long and difficult shift for the young doctor and he’d decided that placating me was easier than constantly correcting me. Plus, he was a good looking enough guy and a doctor - he knew it was a joke.
After about an hour of waiting around for an x-ray (the only thing we needed before Coby could be released), I decided to take fate into my own hands. I left Coby’s room and meandered through the halls of the ER, looking for McDreary.
“Dr. McDreary! There you are! I have been looking absolutely everywhere for you,” I said after finally spotting him coming out of a patient’s room, acting like we’re old friends.
“Hello again. What can I do for you?” He asked with a hint of a smile. I could tell he was enjoying the attention.
“My boyfriend, the one who fell onto the subway platform, needs an x-ray. Please get him one so we can leave,” I said.
“Miss, this is the LA County ER. There is a long line for the one and only x-ray machine. Your boyfriend is in that line, but it’ll be a while.” My charm didn’t seem to be working on McDreary, which was extremely abnormal.
“McDeary,” I started.
“That’s Dr. McDreary to you.” I had him now, I knew it.
“My sincerest apologies, Dr. McDreary. Is there anyway to speed up that process? Jump the line? See, it’s late and we’re here on vacation.”
“Sorry but no. The convicts in front of you will not abide a line cutter. You’re likely to get shanked,” he winked at me and strutted off, leaving me in the hallway.
Convicts? Did he say convicts?
It was then that I truly looked around. In the hallways, people were laying on gurneys and wailing in pain or just shouting incomprehensibly. Muttering to themselves. Almost all of these patients were males. And they were handcuffed or strapped to their beds.
I sprinted back to Coby’s room right as they were wheeling in a new patient, now on Coby’s right. This guy was huge. Maybe 300 pounds and tall. He looked like a linebacker. And he was screaming that his stomach hurt. The man was begging the nurse to cut open his stomach. She was doing her best to calm him down, told him the sedative would start kicking in soon, but she said nothing about his pain. He fought his restraints, cloth cuffs with buckles like I’d seen in movies set in psych wards.
We eavesdropped on the nurse and found out that he was a regular and had possibly OD’d in jail on purpose so he could leave and take a trip to the hospital. He was here on purpose.
It wasn’t long after the jail bird’s arrival that we were moved from the room and into the hallway. Coby had been unhooked from his IV bag and walked gingerly to a chair set unceremoniously down a busy wing of the ER. They didn’t have enough beds and Coby’s injury wasn’t severe enough to warrant a bed.
Christy had shown up with food and the three of us popped a squat near Coby’s chair in the hall, waiting. All we needed was an x-ray. And I was going to everything I could to get us the hell out of there.
Coby’s hospital bed was taken by another man, a soon-to-be convict, who came into the ER handcuffed to a gurney and screaming toward another gurney and the man strapped to it. They were both making a racket, yelling at each other. The one further away had a nasty head injury marked by the dried blood that had caked to the side of his face.
“What happened?” I asked JR, who shrugged.
My answer quickly came in the form of a charge nurse who yelled, “Don’t put them in the same room.” Then she came closer to the man nearest to us. “Rival gang members. This one attacked the other with a bat. Possible stab wounds to the abdomen," she read the clipboard notes out loud before the sound of her voice trailed off into the room, overwhelmed by the myriad of other noises that filled the LA County hospital’s ER on a Saturday night. Coby had picked one hell of a time to fall ten feet off the back of a flight of stairs.
We tried to occupy our time but as hour four passed, I grew restless again and set off to find Dr. McDeary. This always worked in the past. I would bother someone so much, with so much vigor and intensity that they knew there was no placating me, no stopping me, until they relented and gave me what I wanted. The only solution was to give in. Give me what I want, and I’ll get out of your hair. And when it worked, it was like a drug. I got high off bending people to my will and then bragging to everyone that I’d fixed it. I needed this to work.
I hopped my happy ass down the hall. Dr. McDreary was talking to a few nurses and following a wheeled bed. I called to him as I ran to catch up, using his nickname. The nurses smiled conspiratorially at me and then looked to him. “McDreary, huh?” one of them asked.
“What do you want, Lindsey?” He remembered my name. My plan was working. I was so annoying that he remembered my name.
“Oh, you know. A hot shower. A bed. An x-ray for my boyfriend. You know, the usual.”
“He can’t jump the line.”
“Then can you tell me how much longer it’ll be? We’ve been waiting for four hours,” I lamented.
“yes, wait one second while I find my crystal ball…”
I ran in front of him and put my hands on my hips, not amused.
“Miss, please move. I have a job to do,” he said.
“Fine, I’ll just come with you.”
“And break about a thousand HIPPA laws? No thank you,” he said as he walked away from me.
“It’s okay. I’m a lawyer, so I’m covered by the laws of confidentiality.1 I’ll just sign all of these lovely convicts and gang members up as clients and we’ll be golden!”
“You’re a lawyer?” He stopped and turned to me. I nodded. “That explains a lot.”
Right around hour six, Dr. McDreay found us all sitting on the floor. My future husband sat with his arm in a sling, hungry and tired and drugged up.
“Good news. I got the x-ray guy to put you next. There were still a few others in front of you, but they’re regulars. We’ll get you out of here soon.”
I suppressed the urge to hug him. It had been a miserable, though somewhat entertaining, six hours. The x-ray revealed what Coby had been saying the whole time: his collar bone had separated from his shoulder. There wasn’t anything they could do about it and we were finally sent home.
Of course, I took credit for our early departure and bragged about the whole ride home. It was around 1AM by the time Christy drove us through a fast food window where we all ordered burgers and fries and stuffed ourselves silly.
If you know where to look, you can still see the injury on Coby’s shoulder. I call it his chicken wing. A piece of bone sticks up and his shoulder sags ever so slightly on the right side. Every time we go down to LA, we tell this story. About the gang members and prisoners strapped to their beds. About McDreary and me fenagling our way to the x-ray machine.
Sometimes, in order to get what you want, you just have to be really annoying. Like, epically off-putting but also confusingly charming. So much so, that they never want to see you again and they’re desperate to get away from you. Works every time.
Remember, stay difficult and always question authority.
That isn’t how it works. This was a joke.
He’s so lucky that is all he broke!!!
There are a few injuries, like separated shoulders and broken toes, where the typical diagnosis is 'nothing can be done'. The triage process should probably just be to say, "It's going to hurt for a few weeks. Good luck with that."