I’ve been blogging for a while but only alluded to some of my past. This material is heavier stuff than I normally post but I felt like I couldn’t discuss my future without the relevant context. So, my blog will be taking a slightly different turn for the moment. Welcome inside my head.
**Certain elements of this story have been changed to protect patient privacy.**
I was 17 when I met them.
She was the quintessential blond, blue-eyed all-American girl next door, captain of the cheer squad with doting parents and 3 little brothers who hung on her every word. He was a Hispanic kid from South Central with a quick wit, soulful brown eyes, and an enormous extended family, including abuelas who could fix anything with their legendary cooking.
In the land of the silver screen and dreams come true, it wasn’t such a stretch to imagine that they would cross paths eventually. A bystander at the intersection, I was privy to a remarkable scene that encompassed those themes explored in the great novels of our time– love, life, and loss. This is their story, as I witnessed it.
*****
I was there when they collided, literally, in the ED (emergency dept). She was airlifted in and arrived on a backboard, her dilated pupils causing her blue eyes to appear black, but somehow she remained calm– from fear? from disbelief?– as we sliced through her drenched summer clothes and placed lines to bolus fluids and meds through her vessels. The abrupt halt of sirens punctuated by a crashing door gave only seconds notice before another gurney careened into the trauma bay and into the middle of our team, demanding attention.
The newcomer was drenched too, but in crimson fluid unstaunched by a Matterhorn of blankets. Sheets maybe? As the group divided into two complete but smaller entities, amoeba-like, to attend to both casualties, I couldn’t distinguish the beginnings and ends of the wrappings, but it didn’t matter. Trauma shears made short work of the macabre paper mache while the histories came through in patches, like a TV with bad reception between channels.
18-year-old caucasian female, no known drug allergies…
…he was just coming home from summer school and playing with his siblings….
…She has lower limb sensory and motor deficits…likely vertebral fracture…
16-year-old hispanic male, no known drug allergies, presents with severe crush injury…
…Jumped into a lake and she barely touched the bottom… Estimated 40-ft height…
…The hammock was supported by a concrete pillar, which toppled…took an hour to get it off him…
And the hushed words continued to swirl, mingling with the sobs and plaintive questions from the waiting room. We hung units of blood, confirmed OR prep, and readied for the mad dash through the corridors. I tucked myself out of the way, taking care not to stand in the path to the doors, and in one small space between the alarms, she looked at me and asked, “it’s bad, huh?”
Confronted in my spattered scrubs and filthy shoe covers, I could only manage, “I’m not a doctor, but they’ll do their very best for you,” before the gurneys swept off in a parting sea of surgeons.
In the voided trauma bay I picked my way to the sink over the Jackson Pollock floor. My exhalation echoed the whoosh of water from the faucet, incongruous in a space that had just witnessed its umpteenth episode of controlled chaos. It felt as if I’d forgotten to breathe for the entire time. The meant-to-be-comforting squeeze from the charge nurse and my few deep breaths only provided marginal relief, but like a shark, you have to keep moving. The unspoken rule was, if you stop someone else dies.
As I headed blurrily towards the operating suite, even the running litany of to-dos couldn’t shut myself out of my head.
Head to OR, pull gloves for the residents, look up old charts–
you know, that could be you–
find films, check labs–
or your brother or cousins–
get the other teams up to speed, run the new blood upstairs–
there but for the grace of god….go I.
Yes. Yes, I know. But this is not the time for that, not when they’re on the table and in for the fight of their lives. This comes later. Keep moving.
So I pulled on a mask, drew another breath (such a simple thing I took for granted) and stepped through the doors to the OR.
