#bones personal

your mouth ajar, your heartbeat stopped. your nurse had sensed it the moment your blood pressure tanked. bring the crash cart, she said. but i felt myself freeze and couldn’t move. bring the crash cart, again. but in the same second she moved past me brought in the cart and turned the whole world blue.

only when the nurses ran in followed by the doctors followed by the respiratory therapists could i wake from my daze and watch as they jumped on your bed (no hesitation) and called out to one another over the shrill alarm that sang across the entire hospital and alerted everyone that your heart had stopped.

you were my first code, but i only stood in the entryway of your room fumbling with my fear and terror before i was pulled away. (you were not the only code that moment — the covid patient down the hall had suddenly stopped breathing and there is no better role for a dumbfounded nursing student but to run supplies)

and as filled with shame as i am there is no time in a busy icu for me to cry.

i come back to you later in the night. after your family visits and our team tells them that they are sorry, but there is nothing more to do. i wash the blood from your mouth and clean your body before a white bag encloses you and i take you downstairs away from your room to a long, cold corridor and wish the night went differently.

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the night that you come in, we are short staffed. before i can pull you into the room i begin the meticulous routine of donning my ppe. hospital scrubs, yes. gloves, yes. isolation gown, yes. scrub cap, yes. hair net, yes. booties, yes. n95, yes. eye goggles, yes. face shield, yes. gloves, again, just in case.

all the while, i can see your heavy breathing quiver the ribcage of your chest as you gasp for air.

and when i can finally enter the room do i notice just how young you are. but more than that, i can see the fear in your eyes as i introduce myself and quickly take your vitals. i cover your shaking body before i leave and ask if there is anything else i can do.

that’s when you tell me that you want to go home.

i remember exactly how your face looked how you sounded and how dimly lit the room was.

it’s a request that i can’t give you.

over the next several weeks, your breathing worsens. we bring you to a room closer to the nurse’s station and monitor the oxygen levels as they drop and drop in your blood.

i’m not present for discussions of intubation. i know only that you decide against it and enter hospice with your family permitted to visit.

i know only that you pass in the autumn as i comb the obituaries compulsively to see whether i recognize any names. it’s how i learn that your father passes away days later and that i hate few things more than this virus spread across the world.

i think of you all the time. i remember your name, the hue of your hair the freckles on your cheeks the soft pitch of your voice.

i want to tell you that i’m sorry. i’m sorry for the pain and the fear and the loneliness of being a covid patient. i’m sorry for the hurt that rippled across your family and that we could not save your lungs. i’m sorry for everything that i could not have done and that i could not send you home to the family that loves you.

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you smile and dance when i first meet you offering support while we help you from your bed to the chair. good! we all say, grateful for ambulating patients. and though you still need the nasal cannula to help you breathe your joyful spirits are enough to keep me optimistic. but it’s a long week of nursing school and clinicals so we part ways for the rest of the week.

the next night that i work, you are in the same corner room at the end of a long corridor with sterile cleanliness that makes me nauseas every time i remember it.

you can no longer dance or smile with the long tube now slipping down your throat to supply filtered air to the sacs of your lungs. i help where i can before visiting your husband in a separate room sick with the same virus.

it’s hard to recognize you the following week. intubated and sedated — soon i learn what exactly this does to the body as it struggles to heal in the critical care ward.

air is all but plentiful here. and with it pumped into your lungs it pushes throughout your body until your skin expands and i can feel bloat against your shoulders and eyelids.

blood is what seeps into your chest cavity so much so that we need four invasive tubes to drain the liquid and you can survive.

muscle deteriorates from your body the longer you remain in bed, intubated and sedated. cushions and passive exercises do what you cannot which is to provide movement so that when you recover, you are not so weak.

(you do not recover but your husband does just a few rooms away)

every time that i attempt to grieve you i cannot move past the image of your small body connected to lines, tubes, cords, and pads.

i cannot help but hope that the critical care team helped your husband say goodbye one final time before disconnecting you from life support.

i cannot help but wonder how much of it you remembered before you passed. how much you understood of what i would whisper to your unconscious body, hoping fervently that delirium would not find you in places that i could not reach.

for many months after, i visit your obituary again and again. i cannot resolve my own mourning. i think of you, your long and beautiful name, and remember the sound of your laughing while you danced.