Mysteries

Sometimes the things that happen in my job are so surreal and strange I can't believe it.

I feel like people see me as someone outside of reality, I don't know how to put it. I'm not sure exactly what I mean. I feel people tell me things and speak to me in ways they would never speak to anyone else. I don't know how to respond, and I end up saying these sort of grandiose, prophetic things. I sometimes feel I am speaking in a dream.

Today, a girl came in, a trauma. A teenager. She coded upon entering the door of the unit. It was a terrible, long, desperate code. We gave her 20 units of blood, 7 units of FFP, 1 of Cryoprecipitate, 2 of platelets, and 45 bags of fluids. We squeezed it in with our hands, there were two OR procedures in the room, because we didn't have time to get her to the OR. and we suctioned 6 liters of blood--I kept refilling and emptying cannisters, emptying her blood into the sink. We didn't have time to think.

The code was called and she was pronounced. We began getting her ready and cleaned up--the place was an unbelievable mess--and just without thinking, I reached down and checked her carotid.

And felt a pulse. Strong and sure.

I always want to shout, but I've gotten really good at speaking quietly and evenly. In fact, the more I want to scream, the quieter and calmer I am. Wiz is good at this too, and so, when he acts like this--calm and sure and even, I get really scared, which the staff doesn't understand. so I whisper, "Baggins, she's alive. Feel. "
Baggins puts his stubby little hands on her neck. Baggins has an 18 year old girlfriend. He has a naked picture of her on his cellphone. Watching Baggins touch younger women makes me nervous.
"Fuck." Baggins says. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."
I start bagging her.
"get her back on a board, do we have a med box?"
I yell for anesthesia. The respiratory therapist checks her pupils. They are reactive. They were fixed. For one incredible exalted moment, I feel like there's a swan in my heart, unfolding its wings. She's alive. Everyone comes back in. The attending is carping, "a thready pulse often persists for a few minutes, the patient is dead."
"With all due respect," Baggins says, "this girl is still alive." Oh, Baggins, you little asshole, I love you so, I think.
But in the end, we lost her. She just bled out, and there was nothing we could do.
The attending turns to me, she's a little dried up leaf of a woman,--"You," she says, "turn off the monitor, do not check a pulse, do not assess or evaluate her, we're leaving her alone now."
Whatever. Who knows what we lost in those minutes that we missed. Of course I checked her.
Then I went out to talk to the family. The attending had just gotten through telling them the news and is standing by the door. I walk into the consult room--a drab, windowless, soundproofed room that smells like cigarrettes, even though smoking has been banned at the hospital for years. The mother is dry eyed, my age, plump, in a green acrylic sweater.
"Hello," she says, "I'm the mother."
"Hello," I reply. "I'm the nurse."
"Did you see how beautiful she is, did you see how beautiful my baby is? Did you see her beautiful hair?" she asks me
"She is so beautiful," I say, feeling a little surreal. "Her hair is so thick and blonde."
And then the mother starts sobbing. I put my arms around her. There's a lot of family around, but they seem just flummoxed. "I've always been afraid," the mother says, "I've always thought I would die. I always thought I would never live to have children," she's sobbing into my shoulder, and I don't think the others can hear her. "Do you think this is an accident, and I was supposed to die instead, and that somehow I made this happen, by being so afraid of it? Do you think I called it?"
"No," I say firmly.
"Why was I always so afraid? Why?"
why do people ask me these questions?
"Because children connect you immediately with the miracle and mystery of life, and the mystery makes you afraid, but that's just part of it. You're afraid because you're alive in the mystery, and unsure of the outcome, and oh, so tied to it by your love. That's the fear And everyone has it. You didn't call it." I speak without thinking in these situations, I figure that what pops out of my mouth is probably better than anything I could actually plan on.
We are sudden allies, we two, who have never met till this moment. She wraps her arm around my waist like a sister. "I want to go see her, now." she says.
"Are you sure?" I ask. "You don't have to if you don't want to."
"Will you stay?"
"I'll stay."
"How long can I stay?"
"As long as you need to."
We walk into the unit, and even though her husband is with her, oddly, it is me she clings to. And the oddest thing is that this feels perfectly natural. I feel like I've known her my whole life.
So we go in and she holds my hand and tells me all about her daughter--all about her--and in this moment I would give anything and everything except my kids for these people not to have this happen. Iwould trade my house and my car and every single thing--if there was some bargain to be made somewhere along the way that would have spared them this--I would have made it, I swear to god I would have.
Sorrowful mysteries.
I'm nominally a buddhist, but at times like these, it is the rosary that makes the most sense to me. It is Mary's suffering and Christ on the cross.
Listen, oh child of noble family...we are all the same. You and I. There is no difference between us, here and now and past and present. You are your neighbor. You are the stranger. So, prayers and love to all broken hearts tonight. They are our own.
That's my 1/2 hour.