Fullmetal in the hospital

A few days ago while I was working in the ER, I was borrowing a nurse's computer to print out a patient's vitals when I spotted the name "Edward Elric" on the list of patients in that part of the ER. Almost immediately I burst out laughing. For anyone not familiar with anime, Edward Elric is the main character of a well known anime series called Fullmetal Alchemist. I've never seen FMA myself, but I've been to enough conventions to recognize the characters, not to mention I've seen Ed's voice actor Vic Mignogna at multiple cons and he's made no secret of the fact that Ed was one of his favorite characters to ever voice. I know the basic plot of the story, how Ed and his brother Al used alchemy to attempt to resurrect their dead mother, and in the process Ed lost an arm and leg and Al's soul got trapped in a suit of armor. I also know that there are a lot of themes in the series, i.e. the bond between brothers and how dangerous it is to play God with other's lives. One of these days I'll have to watch FMA, but for now, all that mattered was that there was someone calling himself Edward Elric in the ER, and apparently I was the only one who knew that name was a fake.

I saw "hallucinations" as the chief complaint, so it was entirely possible that this guy was psychotic and really did believe himself to be Edward Elric. However, he wasn't my patient and I wasn't about to violate any HIPAA laws by reading up on his file. So I did the next best thing and snagged one of the ER docs, telling him that the name "Edward Elric" was a fake one and that the ER social worker was going to have to try harder to learn his real identity. I even pulled up Ed's picture on my phone and showed it to him to prove that I wasn't crazy either. The ER doc laughed, saying that his patient didn't resemble Ed at all. He was also amused that it was thanks to my "inner nerd" that all this came to light. What can I say, it's not everyday that anime and medicine come together in my workplace. I later texted Kyle, a voice actor I befriended who'd also worked on FMA, to say that "Edward Elric" showed up in in the hospital (without going into too much detail); he thought that was pretty funny.

"Edward" was in the ER for at least 3 days waiting for a bed at a psych hospital, though by the second day, some of the ER docs had looked up FMA to learn about the real Edward Elric. "I heard you're the one who found out it wasn't his real name," said another doc. And apparently the ER docs were still talking about it over the weekend (I got those 2 days off) and my partners heard about it, too. I'm guessing he finally made it to a psych hospital; hopefully he'll get the help he needs and not fall into more delusions of grandeur.