150 years later and we still have slavery

Many healthcare workers, us included, take the same Hippocratic Oath that physicians take: First do no harm.  That’s usually pretty easy to do.  We get into this business to help people so putting them ahead of ourselves is just what we do.  However, there a handful of patients who test my limits.  There are those handfuls of evil people walking the face of the earth that make you question whether they even deserve to breath the same air as us.  Last shift I found myself staring at one of them. And for the first time, I considered killing a patient.

Earlier in the week we and several other units were called to a nice looking ranch house in Parkview Meadows, a really nice neighborhood.  Earlier in the day, the police had picked up a girl who claimed she had been imprisoned and enslaved by a man named Legree for the last two years and somehow she had managed to escape.  She told them that he was also holding more than a dozen other girls in the house as sex slaves.  The cops raided the house and indeed found 13 other young girls of various nationalities.  They also found three young boys there too that the girl they picked up didn’t even know about.  They called us to transport them all to the hospital for treatment.  They were all malnourished.  Many of them had been beaten.  The two girls that Cheese and I transported were the most pitiful sight I had ever seen.  When we got them to the ER they didn’t want me to leave.  Both were clinging on my arm begging me not to leave.  I couldn’t understand much of what they were saying but I did understand, “You strong, big, protect us, please, please.”  It brought tears to my eyes to leave them there but we had other calls waiting I had to leave.  I did run into one of the officers that we had seen at the house later that night and I asked him if they had found this slim ball Legree that was pimping out these girls and boys as sex slaves.  He said that there was a massive manhunt for him and the figured they’d find him soon.  They did in fact find him three days later, and I happened to be part of it.

The very next shift, the cops finally found him and in the process of taking him into custody he had to be Tazered and we were called to take him to the hospital. (After a guy died after being Tazered last year the police decided that in the future anyone they lit up had to be checked).  As were taking him in I can’t even look at this guy.  I’m can’t imagine how anyone could own another human being.  What’s worse than that was the thought of how many times these kids were raped either by his hands or someone he pimped them out to.  It just made my blood boil.  Then he pulled the punch that broke the camel’s back!  He looked at me and said, “They’ll never convict or punish me.  Do seriously think they’ll take the word of those (expletive)’s over a man of my stature.  Never going to happen!”  That really blew me up.  After what he had done and then to be to callous and cavalier about it, for the first time in my life I considered killing another person.  How easy would it be to draw up a syringe full just the right cocktail and end him right there?  Too easy….and too easy for him.  He didn’t deserve death.  He deserved to rot in prison for the rest of his life and let the other inmates deal with him by their convict code.  So I decided not to do it.  We took him to a different hospital than the kids had been taken too, some of them were still admitted there and we didn’t want him anywhere near them. 

I did get a chance to go back and see the two girls that we had transported from that house.  I brought them each a teddy bear which they loved.  I hope they can move on with their lives, and I hope I never have to witness the fallout from sex slavery ever again!