Fighting the Kudzu

Saturday afternoon in the ER and time for the crazies to come in. Hot, dry miserable day outside, enough to bring them out for sure. Ceil heard the opening static of the radio on the last step up the stairs from the cafeteria. The squad was bringing in an elderly female with possible hyperthermia, profound dehydration, multiple abrasions, and acute agitation. She could hear her newest assignment screaming at the top of her lungs in the back of the ambulance. Unintelligible, agitated, and clearly afraid.

“Why me Lord?” No way out of this. It was her turn and she had an empty bay so…. Ceil had been an ER nurse since graduation 15 years ago. Never any thought of any other specialty. Certainly not psych. Just not her thing. And never would be. Glad other nurses could do it, but she cringed at the thought of a psych patient.

IV start kit, fluids, pump; she hadn’t heard if they already had a line. Turn on the monitor. Find some restraints just in case. She watched them rushing through the parting glass doors before she could get the sheets tucked.

Paramedics tossing the patient from their cart to her stretcher. Yay, already had an IV. Young paramedic she’d never met giving her report—pronouncing every word one at a time, more professional lingo than she’d heard since freshman year of nursing school. Basically spouting all the things she could see with her own eyes. Ceil went on about the business of getting her patient settled and stabilized, hearing him, but not listening. “What’s her name?” One small detail he had omitted.

Fumbling through pages on the clipboard. “Umm….,” looking up at his partner.

“Ceil, you know her. That’s Hilda. Lives off the highway just across the line into Lath County. We’ve brought her in several times for the Sheriff. Goes off like this once in a while. We pulled her out of a bunch of thick bushes in front of her house, way out in the middle. No telling how long she laid there.”

“Ms. Hilda, calm down please. I’m going to help you,” Ceil quietly and softly consoling her screaming patient. Checking vital signs.

“Let me go! Take me back. Help that little girl if you want to help me!” trying to get off the stretcher. “Ohhhhh, let me up. Please. It’s going to be too late.” Strong to look so frail. Bleeding cuts and scratches everywhere. Ceil opened a pack of 4X4s and drowned them in saline.

“I can recommend a therapeutic dose of Haloperidol,” the youngster said.

Ceil looking up at him in disgust, then to the older man. “Jimbo, when did you start letting kids drive your ambulance for you? What’s your name son?” Jim grinning, no help from him.

“I am Paramedic Rose, ma’am. I’m happy to help you anyway I can.”

“You are huh? Well, pick up that Posey and help me get it on her before she gets away from us. Then you can go tell the doctor that her vitals are stable and I’m starting a Haldol protocol and turning up these fluids.”

It didn’t take long for the dose to work. Hilda continued to turn her head from side to side and moan a bit but subdued for the moment.

“Ms. Hilda.” Ceil checking her level of consciousness.

“Not bushes,” she said clearly in a soft voice, almost whispering now. “Kudzu.”

“She ain’t wrong,” Jim said.

“What’s that? What’s kudzu?” his young partner asked.

“All that hell-atious mess in front of her house that she was lying in. It’s a vine native to Asian countries that unfortunately got imported to us. You might have heard it called the vine that covered the south. There’s only a few patches in our county and more than we need, believe me.”

“Once it gets started you can’t stop it,” Ceil added. “Horrible stuff. Destroys everything around it.” Gently wiping dried blood from Hilda’s face with a wet cloth now. Soothing her. Assuring her all was well.

“You don’t know. And it’s too late.” Hilda shaking her head, tears trickling down her high cheek bones no doubt stinging the open cuts.

“What Ms. Hilda? What don’t we know?” The women alone now behind the drawn curtain.

“I’ve tried to tell them for years. The missing kids. I watched it all happen and nobody will do anything about it. You think they left the county. No, it was the kudzu. The kudzu dragged them in. I watched it wrap around them. Twist around their little bodies. Tangle them up. Choke the life out of them. Heard their last screams and then they were never heard of again. It’s horrible to have to watch that and can’t help them. I can’t help them at all.” Hilda was whispering and pulling Ceil down close to hear her.

Ok, here we go with the psych stuff now. Ceil had her patient stabilized medically but this was out of her comfort zone. Encourage her to talk, the psych professor had said.

“What do you mean? You think the kudzu got some kids?”

“Oh, I know it. Trust me.  I try to help them before they get pulled in too deeply, but I’ve never been able to get one back. I don’t know them, but I’d do anything to save them.”

“What happens to them? I mean, does it eat them or what? How ridiculous.

“I couldn’t say. I’ve gone in there later on and didn’t see anything. In the winter when it’s bare, you can’t see anything but the ground. No blood. No clothes.”

“You’ve had a terrible experience today Ms. Hilda and you’re not seeing clearly. You’re imagining things.” So that might not have been the right thing to say, not therapeutic.

Hilda reacted angrily. “I knew you wouldn’t believe me either.” Turning her head to the wall.

“Knock, knock,” The Sheriff peering around the curtain. “I need to see her for my report.”

Hilda immediately screaming again. “Get him out. Keep him away from me. I hate him. You don’t want him here either. Get him out noooowwww.”

Trying to get off the stretcher again, but the restraints prevented. A bit more Haldol.

“What’s she got against you, Don?” Ceil asked the Sheriff quietly once the drug worked.

“Well, she sits up there on her porch with a big metal rod or a shotgun across her lap. People are afraid of her, so they call me and I have to go see her. She runs around telling wild stories about the kudzu capturing children. Neighbors hear her screaming at it sometimes and see her flailing about in it from time to time. Guess she couldn’t get loose this round. She’s just crazy Ceil. I think I’m done here.” He went to talk with Jim.

“I’m not crazy and he is evil,” Hilda lying with her eyes closed, calm now and whispering again. “I wish you would believe me.”

“What do you mean he’s evil?”

“He puts them in there sometimes. Gives them to the kudzu. Troubled kids. He doesn’t have to put up with them when he can get rid of them like that. Remember that Brown boy from Snake Holler? I watched him throw that boy in there. I tried to stop him, and he hit me with his gun. When I came to, the Sheriff was gone and so was the child.”

She had more stories. More children. Ceil listened intently. See that’s why I hate psych. I almost believe her. Hilda closed her eyes again and Ceil ducked behind the curtain to check on another patient.

“You’re lying. Nobody believes you old woman.”  Ceil heard him clearly through the thin curtain. The Sheriff had returned to Hilda’s bedside. “I was just telling her goodbye,” he said when Ceil pulled back the curtain.

“Well, I’ve got to get out of here. I just got a call that they may have found the Lance kid and I have to go to West Virginia to pick him up. He’s just a pain in the rear for me and his family. This is the third time he’s run away.”

The radio clipped to his belt alarmed: “Yeah Sally, what’s up?”

Voice on the other end: “You’d better wait on your pick-up. They found that missing girl’s bicycle.”

“Well tell them don’t touch it. I’m on my way. Where is it?”

“Just inside the county line going into Lath. Right in front of that patch of kudzu.”

Hilda crying and screaming again. More Haldol on the way.