Somewhere Else

It's happily rarer than people imagine, even in knife-and-gun-club trauma centers, but Death visits the ER.

Nobody's death comes easy, even the gang-banger who brought a knife to a gun fight, as his mother sobs agonal soul-shaking cries to the heavens. It's not my job to pass judgment, nor torture the living with the final sins of the dead. They'll be able to do that themselves anyways, and for months, soon enough.

I hate death with a passion when early, or some unbidden surprise visitor, and only when the awardee has lived at least their threescore and ten can I see it as a transition, while for only those dying in terminal pain is it the truly welcome arrival of a long wished-for friend.

The sudden, random, unexpected variety is waste beyond explanation, and the recipient of my quiet rage. Like Captain Kirk, I don't believe in the Kobayashi Maru scenario, and the ones you couldn't pull back are the hardest to bear, and the ones you remember long after the others happily fade from memory.

In Gene Hackman's line in Uncommon Valor, some faces never leave your mind's eye, but you make friends with them. Not to do so would drive anyone mad.

This very morning I was happy to be working on a critical patient, because it kept me too busy to deal with the one right next door, dying with no help nor hindrance from me, despite the earnest efforts of 20 others, and I was glad to be able to let others focus on that problem while I got my guy - awake, alert, and very much alive - ready for the cath lab and then ICU. It could have just as easily been the other way around.

I understand and pity the doctors, because they always get to make the notification, generally face-to-face, and they try to keep it simple and as subtle as a scalpel slicing your throat: "Your xxxx is dead. We tried everything we could. I'm very sorry for your loss."
And then understandably try to get back to work on the living, because there are always more live patients to see.

Dealing with the new patients in the room, the next of kin, family, friends, coroner, mortuary, etc., and calling to tell those unknowing to come in, but safely, and without revealing news over the phone, falls back on the nurse responsible for the man or woman or child they'll eventually have to disrobe, clean up, make less fearsome, and remove pads and tape, while leaving tubes and IVs and such in place, in case the coroner takes the case. Covering the patient for modesty, removing blood and worse; and then, after all the sobs are finally spent, zipping them exactly as naked as the day they entered the world into their final sleeping bag for that trip to the Eternal Care Unit. Tag on the toe, tag on the zipper, hands crossed, and please God, in the couple of hours' grace before rigor mortis starts to stiffen limbs and make it impossible to put grandma or auntie or son Jack into the bag without difficulty, and no limbs extended to other points of the compass than due south.

I've bagged some dozens, of all ages. Some mine, some as a favor to an overwhelmed co-worker. Gently and respectfully, sometimes with help, sometimes alone.

Mindful of the fact that fluids accumulate, muscles relax, and fluids follow gravity. Bad enough to handle the dead without getting slimed by them after their departure. Worst of all, the traumas, some where they've cut them open to reach the heart and stimulate it by hand, often to find the offending missile has penetrated the bullseye, and rendered further efforts more than futile, and sometimes after the patient has been sawn virtually in half from each side, with only the spine maintaining the semblance of a whole person.

I don't know what others do, but I tell you freely and honestly, I talk to them as if they were still there as they're being prepped for that last gurney ride. Maybe they still are there, or nearby, in some way known but to God. I have no idea how soon the bus gets there afterwards, or how quick the departure occurs. They may even still be alive inside there, seeing and hearing, trapped inside the body for a minute or few as things fade away after everything fails. It's simple respect for them afterwards, and it helps me to deal with what I'm doing. Quietly, but sincerely, knowing this is as close as I'll ever be to the doorway they've just entered until it's my turn to be zipped into the bag. They get the same compassion they'd merit if they were still breathing, because they're not carcasses.
Not yet.

I'd happily never have done it, but if not me, who? At least I know it'll be done properly, and with what measure of dignity I can accord someone who probably woke that day with no idea it would be their last.

I have my own suspicions as to what happens to them afterwards, but no one truly knows, nor but seldom is in any great hurry to find out, the trip being always a one-way turnstile.

At this point in my life, I still agree with the man who, when asked where he wanted to be when died, answered quite sincerely, "Somewhere else."