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Show 182 One night a call came there was an accident at the mine and Dr. Richards responded. He called and said he was bringing a patient in, to wake the day nurses and prepared the operating room. Pretty soon the patient came and we could hear him singing at the top of his lungs: "Oh, it Ain't a goin' to rain no more, no more. " He had been crushed between an oar car and a timber, his pelvis fractured, and his abdomen torn open. A gash from his rib cage to the opposite hip bone spread eight inches open, with a two-inch slit through which his small intestines protruded. "Were you delirious the night you came in?" I asked him. "You were singing at the top of your lungs. " "I had to sing or swear, " he said. "I don't believe in swearing. " Years later I recalled this episode in an article for the Utah Magazine and a young man I was working with read it. "That was my father, " he said. Cecil O. Poore. I worked with his son at the U.of U. When I asked if I could have the Fourth of July off my request was met with incredulous stares. "Nobody takes a holiday off from this hospital, " Mrs. Howe said. Later that night I saw why. Word came that a Chinese man had been run over. I watched for him to come in, but the ambulance passed the hospital and went to the morgue. It was murder. Some person or persons had backed over the man seven times. I watched the paper to see if the murderer was caught but never heard anything more about it. |