On that "shelter homeless, feed the poor" thing---

[melannen]

This morning, my mother met up with several people from church to do a normal maintenance work day. When they got there, they discovered that there was blood everywhere, and then found a man, barely conscious, curled up in bloody blankets in a corner with his wrists slit. He must have been either new to the area, or somebody who had been trying very hard to avoid getting help, because neither the director of the local homeless center - who'd come to help with the maintenance, and knows basically everyone who's been through the center - nor the assistant manager of the hot dog cart, who was recently part of that community himself, and came in to see what was up - had ever seen him before.

I am going to admit that the second thing I thought - after I knew he was alive, stable, and securely in the system - was "ooh, I have a violent crime scene to explore!" This sounds terribly callous, but I always knew I had more than one thing in common with Sherlock Holmes, and anyway, I'm pretty sure it's an ordinary human reaction - my mom called me to come help them not so much to help clean as to bring a camera so she could get pictures of all the bloodspatter. All comments about tragedy and the way the American system fails the disabled and or/poor can please be taken as read, yes? Because we all know all that already? Instead I'm going to talk about the blood.

As best we could work out after the police, paramedics, and CSI had come and gone, he had been camping in the woods behind our church for about a day or so (the church owns several acres of woods and we let homeless people camp back there as long as they don't start fires or fights or otherwise act as bad tenants). Sometime late last night, he appears to have slit his wrists, lain bleeding in his camp for awhile, and then, after the bleeding slowed, come up to the church building, where he broke a window to get in to the sanctuary. He managed *not* to leave much blood in the sanctuary (which is good, since it has carpets) but a trail of blood smears leads from the sanctuary door to the men's bathroom, where he either tried to clean and stanch the wounds (but instead broke them open again) or purposely tried to re-open them and bleed out more - anyway, huge spatters of blood all over the floor and the sink, smears on the walls, bloody toilet paper and paper towels everywhere. It looks like he tried to stop up the sink, which makes me wonder if he was trying to soak his wounds in warm (or, possible, cold) water. Then he made it in to the fellowship hall, where he left *puddles* of blood everywhere, got into the leftovers in the fridge, and curled up by the oven in some drop-cloths he pulled off the Koreans' drum kit, and bled.

And OMG, so much blood. We thought there was so much blood inside that we couldn't believe he was still alive, much less conscious. And then I went out to where the camp was, and there were two comforters out there that were literally *dripping* blood. So much blood. I'm sure I'm not the first person in my network who's had to help clean up after slit wrists, but the image I had was of someone just decorously sinking away next to a bathtub, not an entire building full of spatters and smears and pools of blood.

So much blood.

Anyway, the next time I have to write something that involves lots of bloodshed, I have real life experience to call on! Also cleaning up lots of bloodshed, I have experience of that now too. It's a lot less pretty and a lot less neat than it looks on TV. Also, the thicker puddles were peeling and curling up as they dried, which I had not expected at all - I thought at first that someone had tried to scrape it up, but it was just peeling itself up. And it brought up the layers and layers of old floor wax with it. So if you've ever been someplace with one of those horrible institutional waxed tile floors, and there's a mysterious blotch that looks much paler and cleaner than the rest of it? Cleaner than bleach can get it? Now you know. Puddle of human blood.

Also I wore a pair of old black corduroys that already had some bleach spots on them, and I got a lot more bleach on them in the course of cleaning up, so I gave in to a long-standing temptation and covered them in pale-brown leopard spots, just like in just so stories.

So, that happened.

Well, at least the local homeless people seem to have gotten the idea that our church is a place you can go when you're at the very end of your resources. So we must be doing something right.

ETA: Right, probably not the right night to finally watch Shaun of the Dead then, oops.

Comments

[eisen]

... you know, and here I was thinking the amount of blood I've seen some shows indulge in with wrist-slitting was exaggerated.

I HAVE BEEN LEARNT.

[melannen]

If I have learned one thing today, it is that you cannot exaggerate the amount of blood that can come out of a person.

(I think you can exaggerate how *quickly* it comes out - this was probably over the course of most of the night - but SO MUCH BLOOD.)

[whatistigerbalm]

Co-signed!

[sara]

AUGH. That is all.

I hope the guy is getting really vigorously rehydrated at the hospital.

[melannen]

The EMTs said he would probably be okay physically, so presumably he is getting rehydrated or transfused or whatever. I just hope he is getting at least a few days in a psych ward and not getting thrown right back out on the street or into general lockup. :/ And that the homeless center people will be able to keep track of him when he does get discharged.

[amadi]

I'm thankful for your church tonight. I'll be praying for that guy, and everyone involved in the discovery and cleanup.

[melannen]

Thank you! Luckily, the people who were there today were mostly the people who are best able to handle that sort of thing matter-of-factly; I guess we were all being watched out for.

[evilawyer]

Zooming by from the doctor-and-master members posts page, FYI.

The first time I a came on an accident scene where there were major, major injuries involved (not wristing-slashing as you describe; I hope the poor fellow gets the help he needs), I could not believe the amount of blood that was everywhere. It was an overturned car on a tight curve, and the driver (who didn't look alive) was half out of his window with what looked like a river of blood puddling under his head that was on the pavement. My S.O. (who has more experience of blood than I ever will) told me this was normal. Weird to see, though.

[melannen]

I am very said that you can say "the first time I came on an accident scene like that". :/

But, yeah, I know people always talk about the quantities of blood, but it's so easy to feel like they're exaggerating for narrative effect, or it's just a metaphor for emotional shock? But no. I had no emotional attachment here, and there was just a lot of blood. I guess you have to see it at least once to believe it.

[evilawyer]

I am very said that you can say "the first time I came on an accident scene like that". :/

Not the most pleasant of things,I'll grant you. It comes from living in the hills, where all roads to civilization (which is only like 10 to 20 miles away, depending on your "metropolis" of choice) are twisty and windy and not to be driven the way some people do. Or rather, did.

[kiwikiwi]

...wow, I don't think I've ever really thought about how much blood that would be, either. That's pretty cool, really. Not that him slitting his wrists is in any way cool, but. I do love the patterns blood makes.

When the seasons change I am super prone to getting nose bleeds, and for some reason most often the shower -- but that means I can stand there and watch the splatter patter, or how it runs down my body, how it looks on the rest of my skin, etc. It really is cool.

[melannen]

You know, the weird thing is that it wasn't? I'm with you, when I'm leaking blood I find it fascinating and often beautiful, but this really, really wasn't beautiful. I took about two dozen photos (which I'm not posting here, because there's tasteless, and then there's tasteless) and only one of them - a line of blood running down the white front of the dishwasher - was even vaguely aesthetically nice.

It was really just a *mess*. Spatter looks pretty on TV, but in reality, it wasn't, it was just drippy and smeary and ugly; there weren't pretty spray patterns or anything, just places where it was too easy to imagine he'd had to stop moving for long enough for something to spill over, or he couldn't stand up any more and leaned up against something. Plus blood starts decomposing very quickly, so where it wasn't dried into an off-brown color, it was either black and peeling up horribly, or it was separating into solids and yellow pus-looking plasma.

I guess it's good to know that I only find blood pretty when the person it belongs to is also having fun?

[starlady]

I thought we only had like 6 pints in us total. Wow. That is a story, and fascinating.

[melannen]

Apparently a full-size male has more like 8-12. And you can lose about half of that and survive.

Which still is only about half a gallon? But it seems like a lot more than that when it's spread all around and soaked into blankets, let me tell you. (I suppose half a gallon of red paint or barbecue sauce that was spilled around half a building would seem like more than it was, too, but human blood just isn't supposed to appear in quantities described by "gallon".)

[starlady]

Half a gallon still doesn't seem like that much. Like, that is only two quarts! But I suppose it doesn't actually take a lot of blood to seem like a lot.

[nicki]

Teach me to ignore trigger warnings, but it's been 8 years, I didn't think I'd do the adrenaline rush thing any more.

One of my most vivid memories of horrible-job-where-I-burned-out-into-an-emotional-cinder is of sitting on the floor with one of our girls who was a really cool, insightful, artistic teen, but bipolar and OCD. She had been compulsively cutting herself and had then wedged herself behind a door and into a corner to try and stop herself and a coworker and I were holding her and rocking her and making soothing noises while she bled and cried and we tried to keep pressure on her wrists and tried to keep her from going after herself again. I don't even know how long we were there, rocking and soothing and reassuring, but it was a long long time (third coworker did dinner and other-5-girls duty) before she gave a couple of those caught breath sobs and sighs and let us clean her up and get her to the ER and we were just covered in blood and tears and snot at the end and her wounds were relatively superficial. I ended up throwing those jeans away because I couldn't bear to look at them and I didn't even really care that replacing them on my $12 an hour wasn't going to be easy.

[elf]

A friend who took EMT training said one of their early exercises involved a pint of fake blood being dumped out on a floor, and reminding them all that a pint's the amount of a standard donation--so little it's not considered a risk for anyone not tiny and mostly healthy.

Human body has, roughly, weight-in-lbs/12 pints of blood. 200 lb person: 16+ pints of blood. Two gallons and then some. Can "safely" (i.e. with reasonable chance of recovery) lose about a third of that. Five pints is a *lot* of liquid, especially scattered around in small-ish splashes.

[sporky_rat]

So if you've ever been someplace with one of those horrible institutional waxed tile floors, and there's a mysterious blotch that looks much paler and cleaner than the rest of it? Cleaner than bleach can get it? Now you know. Puddle of human blood.

I did wonder about that on my parents' kitchen floor. Now I wish I hadn't, really. (Very old building.)

Glad he found where he could get help and I hope he continues to do so!