Chapter 2 first quarter

On Tuesday, April 10, at around 6:20 am, forty-seven-year-old businessman Tim Markham's morning jogging activity is usually coming to an end at this time.Every weekday, as long as there is no business trip, Markham will appear on the private driveway outside the McLaren residence on time at around 5:45 in the morning.Once out, he would run clockwise around Twenty-eighth Avenue, drop down onto Geary Avenue, turn left and run the half mile to Presidio Park, then turn left again. Turn to the lake.Once at Twenty-fifth Avenue, he would run down the street, turn right onto Scenic Drive, cross Twenty-sixth Avenue, and end up at his home on the sea bluff in Phelan Beach.

For Markham, jogging in the morning is not a natural habit, but he almost never changes his morning running route and time.This morning, also garbage pick-up day around his house, he was running down the sidewalk and across the fork from Scenic Drive to Twenty-sixth Avenue when an oncoming car He knocked down.He was thrown to the side of the road by the force of the collision and slammed into a dumpster.The dumped garbage covered him. Since it was morning running time, Markham did not carry anything like a small wallet that could prove his identity, so it was difficult to determine his identity at the time.Although he is a healthy Caucasian man, he hadn't shaved off the beard that grew yesterday before heading out this morning.Now lying on the ground, he was covered with garbage, with a mustache on his face, the pair of running shoes with worn-out soles, the old sweatshirt on his body, and the old ski cap on his head. He looked like a homeless bum who had ventured into an upper-class neighborhood.

Medical staff from a nearby fire station rushed to him after hearing the news and immediately gave him first aid.Markham was bleeding profusely from severe trauma to the brain.He also appeared to have broken bones, lung failure, and other trauma, apparently with multiple fractures, including femurs.If a femoral artery is cut when the femur is fractured, it will be a fatal factor that threatens his life, so he must be given blood transfusion immediately and undergo deep trauma treatment, so that he has a chance of survival. The ambulance driver Adam Lipinski who rushed to the scene of the accident has long been accustomed to such scenes.Although the nearest emergency room to the scene of the accident was Portola Hospital in Richmond, twenty blocks away, Lipinski knew from outside rumors and personal experience that Portola Hospital was currently in financial trouble. troubled.Because for this kind of accident, unless the law has special restrictions, any hospital must send the victim of such an accident to its own emergency room, and try its best to stabilize the victim's condition to a certain extent.But if the man was truly a homeless man with no health insurance, Lipinski doesn't think Portola Hospital would treat him well anyway.

Lipinski was not a doctor himself, but he had seen too many of these deaths in his work and knew how such things usually ended.In his opinion, today's incident is just another example among the many examples he has seen.No matter what kind of treatment and treatment this person received in the emergency room, what he needs next is a series of intensive treatment.But if he doesn't have health insurance, among other things, one thing Lipinski can be sure of is that Portola Hospital, after administering the first aid, will figure out a way to prove that the man's condition should be transferred, and then push him to the county public. Welfare General Hospital.

Last month, Portola Hospital did something to infamy itself.In the middle of the night, they handed over a six-week-premature baby with cocaine dependence who had just come out of the emergency room of the third emergency department of their hospital, to the County Public Welfare General Hospital in the middle of the night.The child's mother, of course, does not have health insurance either.Although a kind doctor at Portola Hospital admitted the child and sent him to the intensive care unit for treatment by taking advantage of the omission of the hospital management department, someone in the hospital made a decision the next day because the mother and her None of the children can pay for medical bills, so they must be turned over to the county.

In response to this incident, some doctors at Portola Hospital were quite critical. They believed that the hospital could not transfer the mother who had just undergone complicated surgical operations and childbirth to other places so quickly, because her condition was still worrying, and she would immediately go to the hospital. The transfer could kill her.In the end, the management of the hospital reversed the decision to transfer the woman immediately.But for that baby Emily, things weren't so lucky.Despite her cocaine dependence and other symptoms, the journey across the city was clearly not life-threatening.As a result, she will be transferred out of Portola Hospital, where she will be separated from her mother just one day after birth.

At the County General Hospital, Emily had little chance of surviving a day in the overcrowded intensive care unit for premature babies.After learning of the atrocity, Jeff Elliott of the San Francisco Chronicle's "Talk of the City" column publicly reported on the atrocity, forcing Portola Hospital to change its attitude.If not, Lipinski knew, the poor little girl wouldn't have survived her first week of life.As it turned out, she was redeployed to the intensive care unit at Portola Hospital, where she remained until her mother was discharged ten days later, with a $70,000 medical bill for both of them.For a long time, politicians, people in the newspaper industry and half of the decision makers of the housing construction plan have been constantly attacking and accusing Portola Hospital, which almost disrupted the normal order and tranquility of the hospital. The behavior of condemning the above-mentioned people is purely opportunistic.

Portola Hospital has learned from Emily's incident, and the hospital has released a word saying that this type of admission error will not happen again.Lipinski was sure that as soon as the victim's condition stabilized a little today, Portola Hospital would put him back in an ambulance and send him to the County Public Welfare General Hospital, because there is no rule to refuse any sick and injured, especially It's the patients who don't have health insurance.Lipinski wasn't sure if the wounded man at Portola Hospital would make it through his second evacuation trip, and even if he survived, he would face the nightmarish situation in the intensive care unit of the County Public Welfare General Hospital. Medical settings and conditions.There, because of a shortage of beds, half of the patients who need them don't get them, so metal stretchers on wheels like the ones set against the walls are strewn everywhere as makeshift beds.

For Lipinski, there was still a little time to consider sending the victim to Portola Hospital, or the County General Hospital for Public Welfare.The medical staff at the fire station are trying to put the patient on a hard board, and several police officers from the police station have also gone door-to-door to collect clues, or ask the onlookers who gathered at the scene of the accident to see if anyone can prove the identity of the victim.The rich who huddle in their castles may not know who their neighbors are, but it may be possible to remember the faces of the wanderers nearby. Because of the severity of the victim's injuries, moving him took longer than Lipinski expected.After a while of busy work, they finally managed to secure the injured man to the hard board and push the back of the ambulance.At the same time Lipinski had decided that he would send the man directly to the County General Institution.Lipinski thought Portola Hospital would just mess with the guy, but he couldn't handle them.Just as he put the car in gear and was about to start, several policemen and a woman who was almost mad ran towards the ambulance.

He knew what was going on, so he shifted the gear of the car to the parking position, opened the door and jumped out without turning off the engine.By the time the police arrived, he had opened the back door of the ambulance and was waiting there.The woman walked and ran, closely following the police a few steps behind.She stepped into the ambulance.Lipinski saw her body straighten at the moment she saw the victim, her hands covered her mouth at once, with a look of shock and grief on her face. "Oh, God!" was all he heard, "Oh, God!" No more wasting time.He slammed the back door of the ambulance, ran to the cab, jumped into the driver's seat and started the car.They have identified the injured man and are taking him to Portola Hospital.