Terror Behind The Knob

A woman recently found herself locked inside a medical facility and called the police, who upon arriving simply had her unlock the door from the inside. I was going to make fun of her, but after a second reading of the news report, I began to sympathize with the trapped woman, and her decision to involve the police began to make sense. Sure, we’ve all snickered at the person who pulls on a “push” door, or says a door is stuck only to have a child come and open it with the turn of the knob.

But in this instance, it would be too easy to turn Elvira Tellez’s panic into a joke, and too cruel. The 67-year old cancer patient had been forgotten by facility staff inside a CAT Scan machine for several hours, and she was forced to extricate herself from inside the apparatus (no easy feat when trapped on your back in a dark, confined, claustrophobic space, under a weighted blanket). In her disoriented state, she called her son for help; he in turn told her to call the police (as tempting as it is to make fun of the son, not enough information exists on him or his participation to make that sort of judgment, as tempting as it is to say something like “why didn’t he call the police himself, go down there, or suggest to his mother that she simply unlock the door from the inside).

The police gave Elvira the instruction that freed her. Then, in what could have been a BentSense-worthy moment (by just sending her on her way) they had the traumatized woman instead taken to the hospital, a precaution we might be tempted to say was excessive, but in hindsight perhaps saved her life and the police department a lawsuit (after all, had they sent her home and she died later, some lawyer would have tried to hold them negligent).

No, instead, my advice is that the Tellez family save their lawyering for suing the Arizona Oncology Associates. For once I’m looking forward to an ambulance-chaser winning a case, taking his cut and leaving a little well-deserved compensation for the victim. I have a 67-year old mother who is deathly afraid of CAT Scan and MRI machines, and a 30-something friend who goes into a panic when placed inside one, and the trauma of being trapped inside of one of these behemoth — and undeniably important — diagnostic devices is worth a large chunk of pain-and-suffering cash.

So this Bendies Award goes to Elvira Tellez, who couldn’t figure out how to unlock the door, and to her son who had the good sense to get this incident on the record.

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