Police officers never know what kind of danger they may face on any given shift, but what landed one Alabama cop in the Intensive Care Unit is the stuff of nightmares.
Greenville Police Officer Marissa Morrison, the city’s only female officer, has been in the ICU at Jackson Hospital in Montgomery since early Monday morning when she was bitten by a timber rattlesnake while on duty.
More than two days, and 16 vials of antivenin later, the 28-year-old mother of three is praising her fellow officers and co-workers for the way they jumped in to rescue her and quickly get her the help she needed.
“It scared me, and it scared my brothers,’’ Morrison told AL.com Wednesday in an interview from the ICU. “You hear about stuff like this, but it never happens to you.”
Until it does.
Morrison works the 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. patrol shift in the south Alabama town below Montgomery. As she has done many times before, she parked her cruiser in a quiet, scenic spot behind the airport to finish her paperwork before wrapping up her shift.
It was about 5:20 a.m. and she got out of her patrol car to stretch her legs. She walked a short distance to snap a photo of the sunrise and was walking back to her vehicle when terror struck.
Morrison felt a sting, and then heard the unmistakable rattle. “He was huge, and he gave me no warning,’’ she said. “I remember screaming and I ran away from him.”
The officer, who has been on the force for two years, quickly got on her radio to call for help. She issued an emergency alert. “I know they heard the panic in my voice,’’ Morrison said. “Usually my radio traffic is pretty calm.”
She said her corporal, Jimmy Oliver, knew exactly where to find her. The quiet spot is a place she goes often to unwind after a shift. Oliver got to her before the ambulance did and another fellow officer, Tom Powell, was close behind.
Oliver put Morrison in his cruiser and rushed her to the hospital. She was bitten in the calf muscle and her leg quickly swelled. The bite span was 1 ½ - inches wide.
Oliver asked Morrison if she could walk into the hospital on her own, but she could not. “I had started feeling lightheaded and I was shaking,’’ she said. “He just scooped me up and carried me inside.”
“They were panicking. They did their best to get me to where I needed to be,’’ Morrison said. “They did an outstanding job. I’m so lucky and blessed to have them.”
Morrison’s co-workers went back to the scene of the bite and found the snake still coiled in the same spot and still rattling. They killed the snake, and later brought her the rattle.
As badly as she was hurt, she said she knows it could have been worse. “I’m 5-feet, 6-inches tall so I wasn’t that far from him,’’ she said. “It could have bitten me in my arm, or somewhere else closer to my heart. I’m thankful it wasn’t.”
As of Wednesday afternoon, Morrison was preparing to move out of ICU and into a private room. She’s hoping to be released from the hospital by the weekend, so she can get home to her babies – ages 8, 7 and 3 months – and also ready to get back to work. She’s been warned it could be more than a month before she can return to duty.
“I love my job,’’ she said, “and I can’t wait to get back out there.”
This story was updated to say Morrison has received 16 vials of antivenin instead of six as initially reported.