There's never been a moment more horrifying in my life than the gasping pleading of a suffocating man that I cannot help. Every desperate clawing of his lungs to inhale shred through me like a serrated edge. His eyes were solid fear, and I'm afraid I will hear his dying voice begging me to help him in my dreams. My coworker and a resident are holding him up, trying to calm him, to try regulating his breathing, and I am on the phone with an operator. The woman's voice on the phone is a line of sanity I cling to, when all I want to do is scream. The EMT are on their way.
Panic, he tries to stand, like a final leap before he collapses. voices, they're trying to get him to respond. I repeat the operator's instructions, trying not to shout. Thrusts! count! 30....check response!....Again!....Again! The voice on the phone demands an AED and I drop the receiver to find it. I apply the pads as they pull away his clothes. Blue lips, the cold of his skin on my hands, dead lungs. Can't think now, must only Do. No shock advised. I flee away to the phone and inform her, my co-worker continues the thrusts. The AED analyzes again, still no shock advised. The operator's panic shakes my already slender emotional grasp. Time wades through cement. We switch. Hands together, quick thrusts. 30. and 30. EMT arrive and I fall away to a corner to watch - can't fall apart right now, I'm in charge here, have to be strong, accept shock and ignore pain...
10 minutes. Their AED machine sends a jolt through his body. The dead flop of his limbs, the sound of bare skin hitting the tile, I don't know how to feel. Oh Death, here is your sting after all. Life, why do you flee?
25 minutes. They've loaded him into the ambulance, and we are left in the stillness of our own shock. My coworker asks me if I think we could have done something different, if there was more. No, we did what we were trained to do. It's 4am. Neither of us cries, but we suffer together in silence.
Where my heart was, there is only a deep heaviness, a hollow that seems to go on past my body and reach into another realm beyond me. I write a brief report, send the emails, and numbly manage to get through the rest of the night. Then, I came home and wept in my mother's arms. I managed to rest a couple hours after that, but in the silence I could only relive it, over and over...so now I'm writing this in hopes that I can escape the moment. It feels so flat to apologize, so empty...but we couldn't save you, it was beyond us, please forgive us.
