Massacre at clinical

A patient, R, hit their call light this morning and said "I feel wet." Their nurse went down and then I was called into the room. I walked in and immediately saw blood EVERYWHERE. R is a double amputee with a fistula (a huge blood vessel where a vein and an artery are fused to allow mixing) for dialysis in their left leg. R scratched it and the whole thing blew. R's nurse was applying pressure to the fistula. Blood was pooled on the bed and had sprayed as far as the couch across the room, covering everything approximately 120 degrees around the patient. The bleeding wasn’t stopping and the ambulance was called. I helped apply pressure, change the R's gown, and talk to them, trying to ensure R was calm and concious – they'd seriously lost a lot of blood. The ambulance arrived and the patient was taken away to HMC. My nurse and I were in the room for the next hour, trying to clean the blood off of everything. It was like Texas Chainsaw Massacre in there. The patient didn’t have HIV but was hepatitis C+ which is even more concerning as far as transmissability is concerned. We tried to be very careful, but especially in the first few minutes of the crisis there wasn’t an opportunity to grab goggles or gowns. We all checked our clothes carefully and it looked like we had done a good job of avoiding exposure. Although there’s still blood in the crevices of my shoes.