Poor Wile E. Coyote, he would get so close to catching the Road Runner and then suffer some horrible injury. And it was never just a simple injury, he would get blown up, then hit by a truck, and then fall off a cliff. But he would always be back to try again.
Patients would come to the Accident Room that looked like they had been through what the coyote went through. One such patient presented unconscious with bilateral ankle fractures, a fracture dislocation of his right wrist, and a broken neck. Luckily he was not paralyzed. After several hours of surgery and several days in the hospital, I finally asked what had happen.
He was a day laborer at a construction site down town. His job was to load bricks on to a manual pulley system that would lift the bricks up to a third story scaffold. All day long he loaded bricks and pulled the rope lifting the bricks up to another day laborer on the third floor scaffold. The brick layers finally finished that level and noticed the laborers had brought up way too many bricks. So their next job was lowering bricks back down to street level. This old boy was getting tired so he told his friend to load the pallet as full as possible so they could get the bricks down in as few trips as possible. His friend obliged and loaded it full. The patient on the street wrapped the rope around his right wrist and his buddy pushed the bricks off the third floor scaffold. Well, the bricks outweighed the patient on the street by quite a bit. The patient shot up as the bricks came down. This force dislocated and fractured his right wrist. About half way up, the pallet of bricks hit him and broke his neck. He then fell to the street breaking both ankles when he landed. You can’t make this stuff up.
All that was missing was the little puff of smoke when he hit the street….
