Where is your stuff kept when you're in the ER?

[Iain Aschendale]

As the title says. A middle-aged man, warehouse worker, is electrocuted at work and his heart stops. He ends up first in the ER (USA, Los Angeles if it matters). The medics/doctors (unimportant to the plot which ones) manage to restart his heart. He's put in a... room? Ward? Shared room? for some observation etc. He's a laborer, so he's not getting beyond the basic treatment.

Where is his stuff? By stuff, I mean pretty much only what he had on his person at the time of the accident. Let's say a flannel shirt, a t-shirt, skivvies, jeans, socks, and work boots. Maybe work gloves. A wallet with his driver's license and a couple rewards cards, maybe a credit card (but not more than one, he's not well-off), and some cash, fifty bucks or so. Pockets of the jeans have his car and house keys and some small change, maybe a pocket knife. Cell phone, probably inoperative because of the electrocution and I need it to be. He's alive, but there are no next of kin/emergency contacts coming to visit him.

Where's his stuff? Is it in a locker somewhere tagged to his room/bed number, in a mesh bag at the end of the bed, or?? I don't need it stolen, we're going to assume that all the medics, nurses, and orderlies are honest, but I want to end up with him kind of escaping/wandering out of the hospital, which doesn't work well if he's just in a backless gown.

Thanks!

 

[Trish]

If you're there alone and unconscious, your things are put in a bag that stays with you/the bed. Here, it's usually hooked onto a bed rail or at the foot of the bed.

In a shared room it could be still on the bed, or in the closet or small nightstand thing that most rooms have. This largely depends on the nurses, but the bag at the foot of the bed/on the rails is common. It's also usually a plastic bag with plastic white handles of the sort that snap together to form a single handle/close the bag.

 

[JT Woody]

I was going to say the same as Trish.

but also add because of this:

I want to end up with him kind of escaping/wandering out of the hospital, which doesn't work well if he's just in a backless gown.

You'd be surprised. At my last library (which was near a large hospital campus), there had been a man who wandered in wearing a backless hospital gown. He came in, sat in front of the fish tank and just.... sat there. It was late at night, and he only had on the footies hospitals assign and still had on his wrist band.
He was too disoriented to tell us his name, but we called the hospital and an ambulance came to get him.

Dont really know how he wandered out and ended up blocks away at night.... but its possible and believable.

 

[Trish]

I was going to say the same as Trish.

but also add because of this:

You'd be surprised. At my last library (which was near a large hospital campus), there had been a man who wandered in wearing a backless hospital gown. He came in, sat in front of the fish tank and just.... sat there. It was late at night, and he only had on the footies hospitals assign and still had on his wrist band.
He was too disoriented to tell us his name, but we called the hospital and an ambulance came to get him.

Dont really know how he wandered out and ended up blocks away at night.... but its possible and believable.

I could totally see that. Patients frequently wander off (my sister used to work in healthcare). Infants and psych have chips in their wristbands to set off alarms if they cross a boundary, but the rest just kind of.... most workers assume if they're going somewhere, someone knows where.

 

[Homer Potvin]

Oh, yeah, that happens constantly. One will show up at a bar in a hospital Johnny at least 3-4 times a year.

 

[Iain Aschendale]

Excellent, thanks to all! Having him just wander off is going to affect his documentation and future insurance/healthcare needs, I'm glad to see that I'll be able to at least give him his clothes back. He spends the rest of the night in a homeless shelter, and if he was in just a hospital gown and bracelet they might send him back.

 

[Kiraann]

Actually, if his heart stopped, then the ER staff will need to work on his chest and upper torso. Therefore, what they usually do is cut any shirts off and rather quickly.

And ER suites built in the last 20 years have individual rooms clustered around a centralized desk area where doctors & nurses do their documentation and treatment discussions without interruptions from patient families or work mates. This was a concept first developed in LA, I believe.

Patient’s belongings are usually inventoried and stashed somewhere out of the way.

 

[Iain Aschendale]

Actually, if his heart stopped, then the ER staff will need to work on his chest and upper torso. Therefore, what they usually do is cut any shirts off and rather quickly.

And ER suites built in the last 20 years have individual rooms clustered around a centralized desk area where doctors & nurses do their documentation and treatment discussions without interruptions from patient families or work mates. This was a concept first developed in LA, I believe.

Patient’s belongings are usually inventoried and stashed somewhere out of the way.

Hmm, yeah, I'd thought about the shirt being sliced open. Used to work 9-1-1 and I know those medics love their scissors. Not going to dispute your knowledge of where the belongings go, but as long as it's not  completely implausible for them to be in a bag hanging at the end of the bed... it suits my purpose.

I'm going to get him out of the hospital with a mass casualty event overwhelming the staff, thinking about a wildfire hitting a music fest or something, so as long as he's not chained up, staff aren't going to notice. I just need him
a) (electrocuted) and briefly dead. That's central to the book
b) out of money and isolated without transport. This will let him be rescued by the ghost of a homeless man (who he will not recognize as a ghost, a la Large Marge or the Big Marine Named Camouflage)
c) taken to a homeless shelter where he'll meet the priest who is either the main antagonist or his staunch ally (still working on that)

So chugging merrily along!