Punch and Judy

We get called for a routine psych transfer. A suicidal woman named Judy had swallowed a handful of pipecleaners earlier in the day and been sent to RIH for evaluation. She has a nurse with her and stinks of urine and unwashed skin, making me wonder about the hygiene situation in the Butler Institute.
Shes docile, cooperative even as we ask her to slide over to our stretcher, she complies easily enough and we follow the usual procedure for psych patients, wrapping the blankets as a burrito around her to immobilize her should she decide to become a pain in the ass.When we get her secured and Ryan and I lift the stretcher i realize she weighs somewhere around three hundred pounds.
Until about Thayer Street she is dead silent, not moving or making a word so I quietly fill out paperwork and watch her from the airway seat. I ask if she needs a blanket because she starts shivering and then shes up.
In one motion she pulled off the straps of the stretcher and sat up, clawing at the backdoor.
"No, no. Judy, don't do that." I jump next to her in the back of the bus and try to push her back down onto the stretcher. Her right hand balls into a fist and connects solidly with my left eye and cheek bone. I groan an expletive and drive a knee onto her pelvis and lock her hands behind her head with my own.
"I WANNA DIE!" She wails and thrashes as the nurse jumps through the divider and helps hold her hands down. I weigh close to two hundred pounds and spend a good deal of time in the gym and her legs are easily moving me while I try to pin her down.
"Are you good?" My partner Ryan asks from the driver seat.
"Get back here!" I snarl back and he says something about pulling over. "Fuck that, hit the lights and get back here." He fumlbes with the emergency board and then jumps out. The backdoor opens and he gingerly starts to try and control her feet while i struggle with her arms. Finally I get pissed off and tell him to call for the police.
Another ambulance arrives before the cops show up. With the help of Craig and a new EMT we manage to keep her still long enough for me to twirl a handcuff knot into a backboard strap.
"She hit him." Ryan tells them.
"Hit you?" Craig asks.
I laugh, "Yeah she clocked me when I asked her to play nice." The backboard strap tightens itself while she struggles against it, wildly kicking and bucking even udner the combined weight of Craig and I.
Providence PD shows up and all is just about under control so we tell them to clear. I tell the new guy to beach his truck under the overpass and drive our truck to Butler. He agrees and jumps out but Ryan is already in the driver's seat. The truck starts moving and the other bus follows us to the hospital.
Ryan is screwing, hitting bumps like crazy so I yell up front. "Calm down! You hit anymore bumps and I'm gonna get a headache." He complies, sheepishly saying he's sorry.
I shake my head and turn to Craig. "This is my last night, too. I start the fire department orientation on Monday."
"Oh yeah, good for you man. Where abouts?" I tell him about the small town just outside of Manchester New Hampshire and he tells me to enjoy it. The girl underneath us starts a mantra of "Iwannadies."
Once at Butler, two security guards come to the backdoors of our truck. The fourth EMT shows up and we try to pull out the stretcher while keeping our patient from going apeshit. Some how one of the discarded straps wraps around the nurse's leg and when we pull it out she yelps in pain, struggling not to fall on her ass. Craig yells to push the stretcher back in and we disentangle her. When we finally get inside, the nurse asks us not to leave without giving her back her coach bag. I tell her I can trade it for crack or a blowjob on Veasie street and she just laughes.
Polo shirted college kids doing volunteer time to meet this or that requirement descend on our little circus, offering to help hold the bucking woman down but all we need is to get her in the safe room, a rubber padded cell that she will probably smear her feces all over as soon as we leave.
The elevator ride upstairs is uneventful aside from her screams about death. A nurse approaches her with an Ativan pill and asks her to take it but she just snarls the C word at her. I laugh and say an injection might be better off. After some typical hemming and hawing they stick her in the thigh and a total of ten people lift her off the stretcher, dump her on her belly and cut her clothes off in the rubber room. They evacuate the room and I watch the heavy door close behind them.
"You guys got a men's room?" I ask a security guard.
"Yeah, are you the one she hit."
"Yep, its my last night too."
"You okay, you want some ice?"
"Nah, just a men's room please. My stomach's bothering me."
"She get you in the stomach too?" Craig asks.
"No, I gotta take a dump. Can someone point me in the right direction here?" Toilet humor is always a good way to lighten the mood.