This morning I woke up tired.
My entire body hurt. My back felt strained, my neck ached, my arms were on fire, my core tingled, even my thighs and glutes were sore from being bent over another human being desperately doing chest compressions for almost an hour yesterday.
I was driving out to the coast for a friendâs birthday with two of our mutual friends. The roads in Northern California that lead to the coast are usually precarious and windy, so accidents happen. When I was 16 I saw what was left a motorcyclist peeled off one of these roads while a woman screamed âGod, no, please noâ over and over as if God was going to magically appear and give us a miracle. One rule of working in medicine/EMS: Miracles happen, but not because you beg for them.
We were driving along when all of a sudden the cars in front of us came screeching to a halt. I told my friend to throw on our flashers and rolled down my window, expecting it to be a deer in the road or something. Actually, that isnât true. Like I said, accidents are to be expected on these roads, but I guess I was hoping for a deer, something mundane and easily dealt with. We were stopped just before a sharp bend so we couldnât see what was now several car lengths ahead of us, but when I heard screaming my heart sank. âDOCTOR! MEDIC! SOMEBODY HELP!â Â
The military taught me to be reactive. You donât think, you just do. If you stop and think too long youâll second guess yourself. If you think about what gore might be waiting for you on the other side of the bend, youâll feel anxiety and anxiety clouds your judgment. I threw the trunk open and grabbed the (sparse) basic first aid kit I keep with me. âPlease, a man isnât breathing.â The woman is nearly hysterical as she leads me to the scene, and I can see why. Itâs a bad scene, not even near the worst Iâve ever seen, but if you arenât desensitized to this stuff it would be jarring.
I shout for someone to call 911, but thereâs no cell service. There is no east bound traffic-yet-only west bound, and the accident is blocking the road completely with a drop off on one side and a wall of mountain on the other. Someone volunteers to turn around and drive the 20+ miles back to where we all last had cell service and call 911. A nurse appears too and starts dealing with the other victims, who are also in critical condition, but leaves me with the man who isnât breathing.
I donât think about the fact that if I donât start CPR within a few minutes heâll be dead. I donât think about the irreversible damage already done. I donât think that there are other people in need of immediate attention. I just react. I follow the steps Iâve been taught. I check to make sure heâs unconscious. I move him onto the road as gently as I can with the help of my friend because I canât get the door open. No pulse, no breathing. I start chest compressions. I do a rescue breath. I do chest compressions. Somewhere in the back of my mind Iâm wishing it wasnât so hot, so maybe we could put him on ice. Iâm trying to calculate how long itâll take EMS to get to the scene even once 911 is called. But mostly Iâm just counting, over and over. CPR isnât like it is in movies. You do CPR to keep the blood flowing, organs need the oxygenated blood to keep pumping otherwise theyâll die without it. You donât do CPR to restart the heart. Short of a miracle, you need an AED to attempt to restart the heart.
I lose track of time. My arms hurt but only in a way so that Iâm vaguely aware of it. Someone coming from the coast has turned around to try to call EMS but by the time they arrive to an area with cell service EMS has already been contacted. Itâs hot even beneath the shade of the tall trees around us and Iâm covered in sweat but I hardly notice. The noise around me becomes a buzz. A doctor eventually shows up, from one of the backed up cars, but a few minutes later Cal Fire arrives. And then an ambulance. And then a REACH helicopter. Theyâve taken my patient away and are racing down the road to the helicopter, but I donât hear it take off. Itâs only when they come back for another victim and go back several miles to the helicopter that I hear it take off. So I know my patient is dead, and I know I did everything I could to save him, but I still stand there in a daze with numb arms.
I am profoundly tired. Iâm not sad. Iâm not angry. I may be a little disappointed but mostly Iâm just tired. Traffic doesnât move until nearly three hours after the accident occurred. My friends offer to take me to the house weâre staying at and let me rest but I shrug; Iâm a mute. So we go to the famous glass beach and look at glass, and I collapse onto the sand and second guess myself. Now I think. Now that itâs all over I think. I wonder who he was. I wonder if his family knows yet. I wonder if Iâd started sooner if he could have been saved. I play the what-if game and lie to people, telling them Iâm not doing that. I think about the randomness of it all. I think about the fact that even when we intervene, we canât save people. I close my eyes and lean back, letting the sand conform to my spine and fill in the gaps between my limbs and torso. The others start to trickle in, and then my brain is being flooded with images of all the ones I couldnât save, because those are the ones you remember. I think about gore and it doesnât bother me, it doesnât make me nauseous and it doesnât make my skin crawl, and I wonder if a wire in my brain has short circuited. And I think about my mother telling me I should talk to someone again, a professional, but all I have to say is that Iâm just tired. How many times can I repeat that over and over before somebody hears me?
I think, I want to lie in the sand and be alone, and have waves wash over me until Iâm a tiny, shiny, smooth piece of glass too.
A sound cuts through the near silence. My friends yell my name, and my eyes shoot open. Itâs time to rejoin the world of the living. Itâs time to celebrate life rather than mourn death. And as I pull myself up, I repeat this phrase over again in my mind: I am profoundly tired.
turnnoffyourmind
snowghoul
2087
baratheonpilled
jacobvanloon
theartofmadeline
