Amateur Gone Pro

It’s a strange feeling, saving a life. I mean, I definitely didn’t do it alone. I had a team of fine, experienced nurses and doctors with me, and I can by no means take all the credit for saving this woman’s life - but we did it. She was dead. Her heart had stopped completely, breathing had stopped completely, she was completely gone. Yet after twenty minutes, she came back. The reaper came for his prize, and we denied him the satisfaction. We stopped him at the door, took her from him and said “Not today. Not now.”

After that, I felt a rush of excitement and joy, which was only compounded later on in the day when a family member of this lady we had saved, came up to me and thanked me “for all that [we] do.” I couldn’t have felt better about myself.

And then a week later it happened again - no, not another life saved, but another code. Another person dying.

We worked and worked and pumped his chest and pushed drug after drug after drug, we shocked his heart, hoping that his heart would restart - we willed him live.

And it worked! He came back and the nurses immediately called up to the intensive care unit to find a room for this man - this man who had been in the ER for nearly twelve hours due to flu like symptoms.

That’s why he was there. He might have had the flu.

And for reasons we still can’t figure out - that I can’t figure out - he coded. After twelve hours of being fine, awake, lucid, and conversational - he just….. died. Like that.

We worked him for 30 minutes, pumping and pushing drugs and breathing for him and shocking him multiple times, and got him back.

For ten minutes.

Ten minutes more.

Then he died again.

We rushed to his bedside, we tried furiously to revive him. We worked another thirty minutes that seemed like thirty hours, and the doctor checked his heart.

Nothing.

Pupils? No response.

Ultrasound showed no cardiac activity.

Pulse only found upon chest compressions.

The doctor called for time.

"0548."

That’s all I said. It’s all I could say. 3/16/15, 0548.

I tried to leave the room. I felt sick. I wanted to leave the hospital and go home and just dissolve into nothing.

But the nurse grabbed me by the arm as I stepped out and said “No. I need you here.”

I said I needed some air. He replied “You and I both know, if you step out that door, you won’t be coming back.”

Maybe he was right. Maybe I would’ve just quit right then. I was just a student, and yet I’d already watched a man die.

And let me tell you, it wasn’t as peaceful and serene as the movies make it out to be.

It was messy. Gory. Cringe worthy.

I swallowed my feelings and stepped back into the room, and saw this man - this body - lying on the table. Endotracheal tube still in place, though now with a red-tinted foam slowly spilling from the top. Blood lay on the floor from were it had run down the length of his limp arm as the nurses hurriedly tapped his vein with an IV catheter to try and push more drugs into him. His eyes lay open, pupils fixed and empty, staring at the ceiling, a look of what could be described as abject horror across his face.

I don’t know how long I stared at it, but the nurse noticed. He placed a hand on my shoulder and said hey, I need your help cleaning the body.

I simply nodded and asked him for direction.

We cleaned the room, cleaned the body, and placed a thin white sheet over the body and face. As I stepped out of the room, I paused and turned to look behind me.

I wondered where his family was. Did they know? Why weren’t they here? Why did this man have to die alone?

I didn’t know what to say, what to think. I just took a deep breath, pushed it aside, and continued with the rest of my shift.

That was 15 days ago, and I still see his face. I can still hear the sounds of frantic attempts at resuscitation.