Idioms 344-346, "flatline, hang on, jump out of one’s skin", Slang 69 "fuckin*" Euphemism 17-18 “be with us longer, not respond"
Michael D. Powers, Ph.D., USCCI
![Michael D. Powers, Ph.D., USCCI]()
Michael D. Powers, Ph.D., USCCI
US Certified Court Interpreter 1980 / Ph.D. Spanish Portuguese 1981 / 24 years university professor / Estimates: 12,000+ depositions, hearings, etc. / 850 trials / 3000 documents / Conference Interpreter 650 conferences
Idioms 344-346, English "flatline, hang on, jump out of one’s skin", Slang 69, English: "fuckin*" as an adjective, Euphemisms 17-18, English: “be with us longer, not respond”
Following are paragraphs three through seven of a short story written by Warren Keen entitled “The Winter of My Discontent” which won contest number 227 to write about a character emerging from hibernating, be it literally or figuratively.
In the first two paragraphs it has been established that her won was rushed to the emergency room and was unresponsive because he had apparently frozen to death the night before.
We now pick up the story in the third paragraph and have copied it to the seventh paragraph:
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Mom’s version starts at the hospital. She rushed the doctor. “Is my son alive?”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Irving,” he said, crushing Mom, “but at this point we’re not quite sure.”
She reanimated. “’Not quite sure’? You can’t tell if someone’s alive or dead? What kind of fucking doc-” she looked around the corridor and shouted, “Can I get a real doctor over here?”
“Mrs. Irving, your son’s body temperature and heart rate are extremely low, and he’s not responding to our efforts to raise them, but he hasn’t quite flatlined yet. I’ve never seen a person hang on in this state as long as he has. We’re doing everything we can, but I can say with certainty that if he doesn’t start responding to treatment right away, he won’t be with us much longer, and if he does recover, he’s likely to have severe brain damage.”
***
I woke up to the sun shining through the slits in the aluminum blinds of my hospital room. I tried to get up but I felt like my body was buried in sand. When the nurse walked in she was so used to me being practically dead that she didn’t notice my eyes were open. As she reached next to the bed for the feeding tube I turned my head toward her and whimpered and she nearly jumped out of her skin. Mom was better prepared when she showed up later in her work uniform. The hugs hurt.
Observations on the language use
1) When the mother rushed the doctor to ask him if her son was alive, the doctor first said, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Irving” and this answer figuratively crushed her. She logically assumed the answer was a polite way of saying her son was dead and emotionally the news was so terrible she felt crushed.
2) Once the doctor completed the thought by saying he did not know, the mother was “reanimated” or came back to life, really angry at the situation of the “doctor” telling her that he did not know if her son was alive, and she expressed this anger by the strongest of all adjectives to emphasize her anger by saying she wanted a “fuckin*” real doctor. She could have also said a “goddamn*” real doctor. These can be substituted with the euphemisms “frigging” and “gosh-darn” respectfully.
3)? In medicalese, when a body does not “respond” it means it does not react to the stimuli being administered, be it physical therapy or medicinal.
4) When a patient “flatlines,” this is a euphemism for “die” since there are electronic monitors that indicate when a patient no longer has a brain wave or heartbeat. Sometimes, if the patient’s body responds, the patient can be resuscitated or brought back from the dead to be alive again.
5) Quite often the idiom “hang on” means to wait. However, another meaning it has is to last, or not give up in a situation, to try to endure it until it finally ends.
6) The noun “slits” refers to the long narrow aluminum strips over the window to the patient’s room.
7) The description “buried in sand” is an excellent description showing the weight of the world felt like it had killed the patient. Note the use of the word “buried” which is associated with cadavers.
8) To emphasize this near-death experience, the nurse reached for the “feeding tube,” a flexible tube passed into the stomach for introducing fluids and liquid food into the stomach, a necessary medical procedure for someone that can not feed himself.
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9) When the patient is described as “whimpering” at the nurse, this means he made a low, whing plaintive or broken sound.
10) When the author wrote the nurse nearly “jumped out of her skin,” this refers to someone that was very surprised or frightened, as the nurse was upon seeing that the patient had actually responded and apparently was no longer moribund. ?
Sources
Warren Keen entitled “The Winter of My Discontent” which won contest number 227