~ Emma
“Time of death, six-forty-five pm.”
We all pause and look at the clock on the wall, as if to check, even though we know the time is accurate. This isn’t something you mess up and hearing the steady flat line of the heart monitor only confirms what we all knew was inevitable. There was no saving this one, no matter how hard we tried.
Still doesn’t make it any easier though. It never does.
“Shit,” the attending ER doctor says, hanging his head.
He’s one of the good ones, the empathetic ones who always takes the time to properly explain things, to both the patient and their families.
“I’ll tell the family,” I say, letting go of the clamps I was instructed to hang on to and don’t let go. It won’t matter anymore.
Dr Jason Langham lifts his head and looks at me, his face washed with exhaustion. “I’ll do it,” he says, like I knew he would.
I nod and we all silently stop what we’re doing and get the body ready. His family will want to see him, even though it’s not always something we recommend. In this case, it’s okay because from the shoulders up, he looks fine, as though he’s sleeping. It’s everything below that’s a mess, the impact of the collision all but destroying the chest and abdomen.
Blunt force trauma will be the cause of death.
I can’t even imagine what that would feel like, the crushing impact, the feeling of bones breaking, organs collapsing, the life being pushed out of you.
Blunt. Force. Trauma.
Not something I ever want to experience.
Jason and I walk silently out of the cubicle, both of us pulling off our blood soaked aprons. It’s been six months since I joined the ER and I’m still not sure it’s where I want to be. It has its good points, the non-stop adrenaline rush as I get to practice every form of medicine I’ve ever been taught, but it has it’s downsides too.
The death being the obvious one.
It’s far too common and I’m not sure I’m cut out for it. I only have to look at Jason and see how taxing it is. He’s forty-two years old but already he looks closer to sixty.
Death ages you and there are times I think I can already feel it happening to me.
“Emma, you good?”
I look up at him; see the sympathy on his face. I nod once, because even though we both know neither of us is good right now, we both know we somehow have to be. This isn’t just our loss, and for the family, it’s a loss that’s far worse. So we put on a brave face. The face that tells them we did everything we possibly could, and their son didn’t suffer, and we’re very sorry for their loss, but now a social worker is here to help them try to move on with their lives.
It’s all bullshit. They know it and we know it. But it’s what we all have to do. As though all of this is some sort of game or something.
Jason exhales and I follow him down the corridor and out into the waiting room that’s reserved for emergency cases. It’s half full but I instantly know which family belongs to our patient. The mother is crying, wrapped against what I assume is her husband, the deceased man’s father. There are two girls, sisters I guess, who are also crying.
Jason does his thing and I stand silently beside him, watching as the family moves between denial and grief and shock and anger and then back to grief again. What little strength and resolve they had dissolves and by the end of it, they’re all in tears as they thank us profusely for everything we did. Or didn’t do as it turns out.
We turn and leave them with the social worker knowing neither of us will ever see any of them again. It’s cold, the way we work. Hands busy clamping vessels and massaging hearts and trying everything we can to hold on to somebody’s life and at the end, we deliver our verdict, say our condolences and walk away. Done. It always leaves me feeling empty too, cold and empty, as though I’m somehow missing something more in all of this.
After all, how can it be so easy to deal in death the way we do? Surely I should be feeling something more. Surely I should be reacting to this, feeling something, anything after everything I’ve just witnessed, everything I’ve just done.
“You did good tonight,” Jason says, a hand on my shoulder.
I glance up, wonder how it’s possible to do good and still have the patient die.
“You’d make a great ER attending, Emma,” he continues and I know he’s trying to get me to stay. “You should seriously consider making this your specialty.”
I nod, because I’m not sure what else to say. At the moment I’m undecided about what kind of medicine I want to specialise in. I’m undecided about a lot of things, including whether I can handle this…this loss on such a regular basis. But I don’t admit this to Jason, because showing weakness is never a good idea.
When we pass the on-call room, he nudges me towards it. “Head home,” he says. “Your shift was over two hours ago and I’m sure you’ve got better things to do on a Saturday night.”
“I’m happy to stay longer,” I lie.
Jason smiles and shakes his head. “Go. Go before you burn out completely and we lose you.”
I nod, wondering if it’s not too late for that. Because sometimes, it’s really hard not to feel like I’ve reached that point already.
Shaking my head, I force myself to take a deep breath as I walk towards my locker. I spin the lock, my fingers automatically moving through the combination without my mind having to even think about it. How nice it would be if everything in this place were that easy. To be able to just switch off my brain and not think about what my hands, my fingers were doing.
But it’s impossible, and as I swing open the metal door my brain doesn’t fail to realise what tonight’s loss is.
Number thirteen.
Thirteen in six months.
The realisation actually makes me laugh out loud, the sound harsh, even as it echoes back at me. Thirteen deaths are what I’ve faced in the six months I’ve worked in the ER. God knows how many Jason’s gone through; god knows how the hell it is he manages to drag himself into work each day, knowing that every new day brings the possibility of another one.
I close my eyes and take another deep breath as I reach for my bag, my other hand automatically wrapping around the phone in the pocket of my scrubs, a habit I can’t ever remember making, let alone breaking. I lift it so I can check for new messages, even though I know nothing has come through and technically I’m off work anyway.
But I’m wrong, because there are two new messages; only these are ones from the outside world. A world I’m supposed to be heading back out into tonight, but a world I’m feeling increasingly removed from with every day I spend in here.
“Shit,” I murmur, sliding the phone into my pocket without bothering to respond.