Shelbyville

Chapter 10

Kyle made his coffee strong and bitter, but what was the purpose of drinking coffee on night shift if it was so strong you couldn't chew it? I sipped the volcanic liquid and grimaced both from the temperature and the horrendous taste. Carrie was scrolling through social media oblivious to my presence just a few seats down from her at the nurse station, I planned to keep it that way. We had uttered less than five exchanges between the two of us thus far on our shift, and I intended to keep it that way. It was hard to imagine that anyone like her had a social media account, or friends more importantly. I scolded myself for being so cynical, but the tense exchange between us just the night before during medication administration was too fresh still in my mind. Focus on the task at hand, I reminded myself as I set aside the coffee along with my disdain for my co-worker and exerted my attention to Stacey and his monstrous pile of paperwork stuffed into his chart.

I had no idea where to begin. Patient's charts are not chronologically in order, they are divided up by sections, each serving a purpose of preserving some sort of legal, medical, or historical documentation that either pertained to the patient's treatment, or somehow protected a medical provider in the chance that a litigation was brought against them. Starting with his initial intake may be the most beneficial, it will be a thorough evaluation.

The beginning of Stacey's intake began with a thorough evaluation of his medical history, which scarcely provided any information, not only because he was presumably young therefore healthy, but because he was uncooperative during the process. Shocker. He had an allergy to penicillin, and did not eat pork products for religious purposes, Muslim? I flipped to the section on religious beliefs, sure enough, his religion was documented as Muslim. I pictured his amber eyes and dark complexion in my head, what nationality was he? Middle eastern? I frowned at the answer within his chart "white/non-Hispanic."

It didn't make any sense to me, his last name was Adams, it's a very American last name, not middle Eastern at all, nor was his first name for that matter. Was his dad American? Was he adopted? I remembered our conversation just earlier that week, his mother had named him Stacey, it was a cruel joke as he recalled, so his mom named him. His mom was American then, Stacey didn't strike me as a traditional middle eastern name. If he was telling the truth, he doesn't strike me as reliable or a truth teller. I puzzled over this information for only a moment before continuing on my journey through the rest of his intake, I was getting ahead of myself. Getting ahead of myself could mean skipping over pertinent information.

The inscription about his distinguishing marks was lengthy considering the numerous tattoos that decorated his body. I was surprised to note he had a significant number of scars on his body as well. I relished the fact that at the time of his intake, he had some scratches on his forearms, one of the girls had fought back. Was it a victim? No, he technically never killed any of them. Was it one of his harlets? I decided not to focus too much of my attention on this minor detail and continued searching through his information. I skimmed over the description of his tattoos, not too concerned about the designs, or so I thought, one in particular caught my attention. "Left thigh: portrait of wife." I stared at the word wife, looking at it, but not believing it. Was it his first wife? Or his second wife? I scanned through the rest of the tattoo descriptions that surrounded that portrait, Arabic, lots of Arabic.

I continued to scan through the documentation with a hunger and a thirst to learn more about him. Reading the breadcrumbs of information about this patient was like eating a piece of bread before a sumptuous meal, it did not curb my appetite, only made me want more.

I let out an involuntary gasp, it penetrated the long silence that had been hanging over my colleague and myself. Carrie jerked her attention over at me expectantly.