Request: Emergency Room Procedure

Here is the scenario:

A young woman, apparently in her 20s-30s, normally dressed, with no apparent injuries, enters a hospital emergency room one morning.

She is an albino.

She writes her name on the signup sheet as "Jane Doe".

It being a big city hospital, she waits a few hours for her turn, and when it comes up, very calmly reports that she has no memories beyond waking up this morning in a hotel room where she had paid with cash and registered as "Jane Doe" the previous night.

She has less than $10 on her and no identification.

What happens next?

EDIT: I am writing a horror story that may one day become part of a novel or webcomic or something: this is part of the research. No money will change hands based on replies to this thread, but if there are acknowledgements some day, names can appear in those.

I'm not a medical profession, but that's very simple...

She's going to invited back to an examination room. The doctors are likely going look in her eyes with the light... I forget exactly what it does but it might give "clues" to what is going on and then she is going to have an MRI or CAT scan then she's gonna be left in a room for a while as doctors debate what's going on. They most likely will call the police at some point during the previous events and have the police try to take her fingerprints to identify her... As soon as the doctors can they'll likely give a diagnosis explaining to her what they think is going on and what they can do...

if they can figure out who she is, family will be called, and explanation of what's going on will be give and then she will be handed over to their care, telling them to have her have a follow up visit to doctors at some later point

if they can't find out who she is I believe they will keep in the hospital for a few days, but i think they'd send her to assisted living or some such and her face will likely be on the news..

Again not a medical profession, but that's roughly what would happen probably I think.

Make sure she bleeds red and does indeed have a navel. Does she give off any weird magnetic signals that interfere with the hospital equipment? Do telephone/PA speakers start squealing static when she's near?

Check the back for scars where the wings used to be.

Does she have odd cravings for stuff that wouldn't normally be considered "food"? Like say, drywall or markers or gas station burritos?

Okay let's roleplay a little.

This is from my phone, so please cut slack on formatting.

She has no sign of concussion or recent injuries.
She asks to be checked for sexual assault which shows that she us a virgin.
She has a navel. No wing scars though.
Her fingerprints are in fact missing. Looks like someone removed them with acid weeks ago.
Cat scan shows signs of fairly extensive brain damage but no obvious cause. She does not show any obvious sign of mental impairment, in fact she seems unusually bright.

She is hungry, but no specific wired cravings per se. She does mention that the smell or sight of blood makes her hungrier. She thinks this might be wierd but is not sure.

Please continue.

Is this a setting with widespread supernatural, superhuman, super-tech, or otherwise extranormal stuff? It doesn't sound like this is set in CoH specifically, but being able to call in, say, a psychic could dramatically alter how this would be handled. Or does this story take place in basically the real world?

Dental records?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

Are there any tags on the clothes she was wearing?

Does she have any memory of current events? IE, "Who is the President?" level of questions. May have to dig a little to get past stuff she heard/read in the waiting room.

In my local area the flow would be something like this assuming she went to one of the larger regional hospitals (the smaler ones woudl typicaly send her to one of the larger regionals after the first few steps).

She woudl be seen by an ER physician and her medical "history" taken (in this case, she only has this incident.)

She would be visually inspected for injuries.

She would be given an MRI/CAT Scan (and since she has extensive brain damage she'd likely be subjected to several including fMRIs over the course of several hours or days).

They would run any tests she requested (in this case, she'd be checked for sexual assault).

With the brain damage she would be admitted and the local police called.

Local police would take her data (description, anything she recalls, fingerprints and so on). Should that data be useless they may later request dental x-rays as a last resort. She would be assigned a police psychologist and a DSS social worker. Police would file a missing person's report on her, slowly expanding their search from the local, to county to state to region and eventually to the federal level. Odds are they would eventualy get most newspapers in the state to run her picture with a "fluff' story, that would be picked up sporatically in other areas and on the internet. If all efforts in the irst month or two failed, she'd be issued a temporary identification that, assuming she doens't recover her memories, woudl become somewhat "her" inclusing a SS number, ID card and such.

The hospital would remand her to the psych ward for evaluation. Given her complete lack of memories, it woudl most likely recommend she be remanded to the state's care in a nearby mental health facility.

The hospital would assign her a patient advocate. The patient advocate would normally act on her behalf due to the extensive brain damage detected under the sssumption she could and likely does have some sort of impairment.

The patient advocate would get her into the DSS system. She'd be issued whatever state assistance was avaliable, likely Medicade and food stamps and usually she'd be placed on the rosters for utilities assistance. There is a very good chance with her medical conditions the Patient Advocate woudl also try to get her on SS Disability (she'd be turned down at least twice and likely a third time even with legal assistance from the sounds of your description).

She would be held in a "waiting tank" for anywhere from a few days to a week. During that time she would be under hospital and psychiatric doctor's care. This would last until a place in a state run facility opened up.

She would stay from two weeks to three months in a "short term care" facility. Length of time would depend on her cooperation and her mental state and if she showed any memory recall of the past. She would not enjoy the experience as most of those places are described as "the waiting room for hell."

After she'd stayed her limit in that facility she would either be determined to be no threat to herself or others and remanded to a half-way house for the functionally mentally ill (limited to a 6 months or so stay), tossed out the front door on her keister if the half-way houses were full (VERY likely) or remanded to long term care in another state (the east coast likes to send people to a facility group in Virginia for some reason but it takes some serious mental illness or several hospital stays to get sent there).

After that, she'd likely drop out of the system if she didn't establish herself in some way. She'd need a job, an adress, utilities and all the "stuff for normal living" even though she'd be at least partially cared for by state services like food stamps and welfare. Her missing person's file woudl be anywhere from a month or two old to a year old by the point and be quickly slipping into "cold case" turf. If it reached a year without any leads coming up, it would be converted to the cold case files and revisited MAYBE once a year.

I am on my phone at work. Apologies for brevity and delays.

No static or electrical wierdness.

Her mannerisms are a bit off in that other than having a snarky sense of blqck humor, she seeme too calm ajd rational for a person in her situation.

Normal pulse and temp.

Her clothes are all branr new with normal tags.

The world is somewhere between mystery men and the grudge and unbreakable in terms of wierdness. You can't call up a friendly psychic for a reliable believable reading, but the cops in a big city might employ someone to help when they are stumpe on an important case.
There are a few spandex wearing do gooders, as in real life, but some ro have surprising levels of competence. A cop of emergency worker with more than a decade of service has probably seen traumqtising things they cqnnot explain.

She has fairly poor eyesight and very good relexes.

All of her teeth are implants a few weeks old. Har canines are a little longer and very sharp. Looks like hollywood quality high dollar work.

Missing persons reports from the police?

Blood/toxicology results?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

Footprints will likely be partial due to heavy calluses consistent with a lot of barefoot actvity.
Missing persons reports are as normal for a big city.

Blood toxucology shows recent exposure to "she ought to be dead" levels of a neural paralytic. This could account for the brain damage, I am guessing.

The dental work once traced would lead to an extremely wealthy and uncooperative surgeon who is known, Er, alleged to be in the pocket of organized crime.

On the subject of social security. Per Wikipedia there is a guy known as 'benjaman k' who was found behind a burger king 6 years ago. He has yet to be assigned a number and is still unidentified and unable to legally work and still homeless.

RedBone and Hyperstrike seems to have medical profession experience and have completely different and opposing ideas of what will happen... This seems to me that this means regardless of what you do you'll be realistic...

So considering this is a horror story I'd go with the more frightening and the more jostling and the more kinetic... which will result in the reader not able to get their baring helping them to relate to the character...


Also acid burned fingers to get rid of fingerprints would be indication of foul play as they look different than, say, the device from Men in black which removes finger prints because acid is imprecise.

The big problem with the story is that it sets up a problem of identity being stolen and someone spending lots of money to do it... but assuming that's the case then they'd obviously want them never to be able to recover it and as such is more or less murder. If they are going that extent and have that much money they'd more likely go with murder as it's cheap and there is no risk of memory returning.

If it's something like that it's a big plothole. If it's not, then it becomes obvious that this person isn't someone that has been altered but someone that has been made to look like the were altered and seems more in line with aliens or "others" trying to sneak into human civilization. They'd have the tech and the motive to do it... Mobsters or something like that would never waste the time and very few people would have the wealth and/or stupidity to risk doing that to someone and try to get away with it.

I have a good reason for the circumstances, so no worries.

For the initial story it is best if jane stays a jane doe for a couple months or so.

If I end up committing trilogy I may or may not need her to remain thoroughly mysterious. Even if she is identified she will still likely have amnesia. Assuming she even survives the horror stuff.

Next question. I would like a nurse from the hospital to take her in as a roomie. Is that unbelievwble? Illegal?

I gather feom the above that her hospital stay will a week minimum up to a couple weeks tops if she presents no or few symptoms.

I can't see any reason that it would be "illegal" (just my opinion). It might be against hospital policy to fraternize with patients though.