the patient had taken an extra dose “to really get it on.” As he finished his brief history, a blood-curdling scream pierced the air, and the young woman appeared outside the exam room, eyes wide, mouth open, completely naked. Bev and one big medic were right behind her, arms outstretched. Just as their arms approached the wild woman she bolted down the hall, passing Ben, a medic, and me as if we were frozen ice statues. She rounded the hall corner at full sprint, passing the desk receptionist, security guard, and two medics, and raced out the ER door heading straight for the hospital lawn leading to busy I-96. Ben and I exchanged quick glances and took off after her. Ben reached the naked woman first about fifty yards from the busy expressway. He made a perfect ankle tackle, but struggled to keep her under control. She screamed, “Pigs, let me go! Ah ya, ya, ya! They’re coming after me! Look, look!” She pointed back at the hospital, then began beating Ben furiously with both fists. The moon above us was now full and bright.
Ben looked up at me and said, “I think this is a medical patient, Jack!” He lifted her up from the ground and onto my shoulder, quickly tying her ankles together with a phlebotomy tourniquet. She slowly turned her head to me, stared into my eyes and said, “Blue, the devil’s eyes are blue,” then spit on my forehead and kicked my back. The middle-aged Hispanic security guard finally arrived, draped a brown blanket over the struggling young woman, and we began our march back to the ER.
“Oh no, oh no. They’re coming for me. Help, help!” she screamed. I looked into her large, very-dilated brown eyes.
“Who is after you?” I asked.
“The panthers. The black, lean, hungry panthers. Oh, God, no, no, leave her alone!” she pleaded.
“Are they chasing you?”
“They’re chasing a small lamb and oh, oh, the lamb has turned to us and its face is my face! Save it!”
“Why are the black panthers after the lamb?”
“They want to catch her and tear her apart. Oh, no, no, they’re getting closer!”
“Imagine yourself as the lamb. Try to get inside her . . . Are you there?”
“I’m there. OK, but I’m so afraid!”
“Now roar. Roar like a lion, like you’re not afraid, but ready to fight back,” I paused while she roared into the night. “What happened?”
“They stopped! The panthers are backing away!”
“What’s your name, little lamb?”
“Sarah. Sarah Bentley. You’re a nice doctor, will you take me back to the hospital now?”
“That’s where we’re headed, Sarah Bentley. Are you a student?”
“Yeah, I’m a psych major at Wayne State. Oh, oh. . . they’re still looking at me, and their jaws are open and dripping blood. Oh, what have they killed? Help! Help me!”
“Roar, Sarah! Roar like your life depended on it.”
“Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!”
“What’s happening?”
“They’re backing off. I think they might go looking for another lamb.”
“We’re almost back to the ER now. The nurse will give you a gown, and I’ll give you some medication to calm you down until the psychiatrist arrives.”
“Your voice is so calm. I think I’m getting sleepy already. I took the LSD to know what they were seeing.”
“Who was seeing?”
“The patients. The psych patients we’ve been reading about. The hallucinations of the mad.”
“Now you know.”
“Oh, God, what was I thinking? Oh, ouch. Egads!”
“What happened?”
“Electric shocks just came out of the sky and are piercing my head. Pain, pain.”
“Do you see the rock in front of you?”
“Yes, I see it. Oh, the lightning is burning my hair!”
“Pick up the rock and hold it over your head and the shocks will bounce off.”
Sarah’s arms reached over her head holding the imaginary rock, then held steady.
“Well?”
“The shocks are bouncing off. The pain is going away.”
“We’re here now, Sarah. I’m placing you on the stretcher. Keep your arms over your head. I’ll see you soon.”
Sarah was only nineteen. She was admitted to the hospital psychiatric service for five days. The terrifying hallucinations slowly receded. The psychiatrist remarked that her lion roars could be heard in downtown Detroit. As Sarah was rolled to the elevator to the psychiatry ward, an orthopedic patient was brought back for Ben’s attention.
“You won’t believe this,” Ben stated, looking incredulously at Bev and me. “Orthopedics. What is more straightforward than bones and joints? A cast here, a brace there, it’s fractured or it’s sprained. But this next patient has two broken tibias, both fractured in the same place? How could that happen? I asked the patient to explain this as I was placing him in traction and waiting for the on-call orthopedic surgeon.”
The patient hung his head and replied. “My wife said, ‘Don’t do it. Just call the tree guy.’ But I could see the cracked limb. I could reach it with my extension ladder. As I climbed up, I noticed the full moon, just behind the limb. I went into a trance, I think. I began to dream of the first time I took my wife out on a golf course with a blanket and a bottle of wine. We were so young and everything was so new. I climbed out on the limb, the saw in one hand. Somehow I could get a better grip by sitting on the limb. The moon was so bright, my wife so young, and her skin so soft. I sawed away and the limb cracked and fell, and I fell too, straight down and landed on both feet, twenty feet down. I guess I’m lucky it was just my legs.”
Ben smiled and looked at Bev. “I guess that’s the last of the lunar crazies?”
Bev reached for the phone at that moment. She listened for a while, her whole face turning into a frown.
“Just a minute, Sir, I have the doctor here. Let me see what he thinks.” She punched the hold button. “You are not going to believe this. It could be a prank call, but the guy seems like he’s in a real panic. Will you talk to him?”
“How could it be worse then what we’ve already seen?” I asked.
Bev punched the hold button and handed the phone to me.
“This is the Doctor,” I said.
“We got trouble here, Doc,” a man replied, breathing heavily. “Real trouble. I was making love to my girlfriend. We were really going at it. Then I was done, right, so I began to pull out, but I’m stuck. Every time I try to exit I seem to get caught, and she screams bloody murder. So we’re lying here, see, and I don’t know what to do.”
“Don’t try to come out again. Give the nurse your address and we’ll send an ambulance out to bring you both in. Wrap up in a blanket and I’ll see you soon.”
Twenty minutes passed and the couple was brought back on the stretcher in the missionary position. The girl explained that they had been drinking a lot and looking at the full, radiant moon. Her boyfriend opened the window to let the moonlight in, and then they really went at it. When he was done he tried to withdraw, but each time it felt as if he was pulling her insides out.
The pelvic exam was difficult, with the boyfriend pushed to the side. The light illuminated her vagina and the man’s uncircumcised penis could be seen ensnared with the laces from her intrauterine device. Each time he moved, the captured penis tugged on the cervix, pulling the uterus forward. The cuts of the laces were tight, but eventually the man and the penis were free. The gynecology resident removed the IUD. The couple were grateful