Things you don't forget in EMS (eyeball)

 The Call of the Missing Eye

Some calls start out normal. Some calls get weird.
And then some calls drop you straight into the Twilight Zone.

We were sent to a beautiful home in one of the nicer neighborhoods for a fall injury. Dispatch added that the patient had been drinking, so we were already bracing ourselves for the usual “I’m fine, I don’t need to go” routine.

We walk in and find our patient in the living room with blood on her face, a wine glass on the table, and a very glazed look. She told us she’d had a bit to drink and tripped into the corner of the end table. Swollen cheek, bloody nose — nothing too wild at first glance. She denied neck or back pain, said she hadn’t passed out, said she could walk, the whole nine yards.

We got her on the stretcher and into the back of the truck. 

I was standing behind the ambulance, talking to the officer with us, when my partner yelled for me. As I climbed into the back of the truck, she gave me a look I’ll never forget.
“Hey… check her pupils. Tell me if you see what I see.”

Left eye? Normal.
Right eye?
Gone.
Not injured — not swollen shut — literally gone.
Just an empty space where an eyeball should’ve been.

I asked my partner, “Did she start with two?”
She said the patient avoided the question.

So now it’s on me to go back inside and ask this poor man a question no husband expects to hear from EMS at 9:30 on a Saturday night.

He opens the door, and I just go for it.

“Sir… this is going to sound strange, but… does your wife normally have two eyes?”

The man froze. Blinked. Stared at me.
“YES… she does.”

I said, “Okay, well, right now we can only find one.”

He looked horrified. “Do we… need to look for it?”

“Before we do that,” I asked, “do you have a dog or a cat?”
Because you know precisely why I asked that.

He said no. And just like that, the two of us dropped to our knees and started sweeping the floor like we were hunting for a lost contact lens — except this one was significantly more critical.

Nothing. No eyeball. No clue. And we needed to get moving, so off to the trauma center we went.

Hours later, back at the hospital, curiosity got the best of us. We checked in to see how she was doing. The trauma team showed us her head X-ray…

And there it was.
Her eyeball was inside her sinus cavity.

When she fell, she hit hard enough that the eye basically got pushed straight through the floor of the socket into the sinus. Not missing — just… relocated.

We found out later that she had surgery and actually regained some vision in that eye. Tough lady.

And believe it or not, this story does have a part two — but that one can wait for another day.