Death

Okay.

The best thing happened today.

I have this young patient who was in a motorcycle crash and broke his C3-C5 vertebral bodies leaving him an incomplete quad. He had no feeling below the nipple line and gross motor movement only in his left upper extremity. That's his left arm, for you civvies. Sort of. No squeezing, no fine motor, no thumbs up.

Day after day, I go in, do my neuro checks, chart. "Absent to pain, absent to pain, absent to pain" only this morning...I pinch his toe with the hemostats and guess what?

You can guess.

He jerked his foot away and grimaced.

He did that with both feet, in fact.

I was so happy I kissed him. (on the forehead)

I went running for the resident: "Withdraws to pain! Withdraws to pain! Withdraws to pain!"

The resident, Dr. Wetter (who I like. He's gangly and has adult acne and does a lot of yoga.) came in and repeated the neuro check. Then we got the neuro attending and his team in and they put our boy through his paces, and he really has improved. He can even twitch his left knee, but it's very hard for him.

He's not out of the woods, of course. But this is a good sign. He has a terrible case of pneumonia, which could still kill him.

I feel like my real boyfriend is Death. Dealing with death this much is like dating a really charming, slightly sadistic, good looking alcoholic. He throws me a bone here and there, just to keep me coming back to the ICU. The things I battle and battle for he'll finally concede a little bit, but he always has to have the last word. Fucker. People suffer and suffer, and spiral down and down until they go.

But I've seen some good things, too. I hope this isn't a false hope. I hope he gets better. He's awfully young. 17. I had a dream last night that Nick (it didn't quite look like Nick, but I guess that's who it was) was five and somehow, he'd died. We'd wrapped him in a blue sheet and had him by the riverbank and they were going to burn his body. I was kneeling on the smooth wet stones by the river and had my cheek next to his little cold plump one and I wouldn't let him go, but they were setting the torch to the pyre. I woke up screaming and sobbing. Jay held me tight.

"It's okay, it's not real. It's just a dream." He told me. It was 4:07 am. I looked at the red numbers on the digital clock by the bed when I woke up.

But I couldn't close my eyes again, because I would see the little boy, and that they would set the pyre on fire and he would be gone from me forever, just ash. This child I loved more than my life, gone.

It is hard to be "on" when you have just woken up screaming from a nightmare. It is hard to be who someone wants you to be. I couldn't stop crying. I was still in the dream, couldn't get the image out of my head, still can't.

"How about a nice job in a health clinic," Jay murmurs, stroking my hair, "where you give vaccinations and treat poison ivy?"

"I am an exile." I told him. "I am tired of being an exile."

I am. I want to go home. How did I get so far out here? And where am I? And why did I come here in the first place?

That's my 1/2 hour. Sorry it's so screwy.