Making the Call

As some of you may know I work as a LDS temple worker at the Manhattan Temple on Saturday afternoons. Well, yesterday I went to go work my shift as usual. It started off as a pretty normal Saturday, except for the fact that we were short sister's working that day, so I was assigned to work on the first floor for 3 of the 5 hours of my shift (normally we have half-hour shifts in different areas).

Around 5:00pm I was going about the work and the brother working at the front desk (who only spoke Spanish) grabbed me yet again to help him. Previously it was to talk to people at the front desk who had a question and he couldn't understand them. This time was different. He showed me blood that was on the floor leading into the men's bathroom, and then directed me out to the front lobby (entrance to where the temple and church building split...if you have been to this temple you know what I'm talking about) where I saw the security guard on duty standing there with paper towel to his arm soaked in blood and blood all over the floor! So needless to say, my first response when seeing all that blood was to call 911.

Yep, I made a 911 emergency call while working at the temple. Apparently the man is on dialysis and had shunts all over his arm and was bleeding from one of them (not that I knew what shunts were at the time, but he kept telling me he was bleeding from his shunt). So I talked with the emergency dispatcher, first trying to figure out the address to the temple (finally found a card with the actual address on it) and then not fully understanding her when she was asking how old the man was (I thought she had asked how he was doing...logical thing to think she was asking). After making the call, I waiting with the gentleman until the EMTs arrived. I asked him if he needed anything and he said he was fine. Meanwhile, this whole time there's people looking in through the glass doors and seeing the blood, I'm standing there in my white dress, and then this family of 5 or 6 comes in asking if there is a visitor's center ("sorry but there is not...there is the church building that is under renovation and then just the temple, and I don't believe the Church is planning on adding on a visitor's center").

Finally the EMTs came, wrapped up the man's arm and tried to convince him he needed to go to the hospital to have it looked at. They kept asking me for confirmation that they needed to take the man, seeing that I was the employer, but finally the Temple President came down to handle the situation. After a long conversation between them all, while I stood there note sure of what to do and another brother moping up the blood and such, the man ended up staying. He did not go to the hospital. He said this happens sometimes and if it stops bleeding (which it did right before the EMTs got there) then he doesn't worry about it. Crazy.

So that was the story from yesterday's shift at the temple. I think it is safe to say that it was in no way a normal day at the temple.