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| Those pink feet tell you this photo was posed with a live person. Ask me how I know. |
Some people think fixed and dilated pupils is how you know someone's dead. Others will tell you it's flat brain waves, or asystole on the EKG monitor.
They're wrong.
I was reminded of this fact by the real actual everything-proof acme of you looking down at your own body from outside it, and knowing things are bad.
As someone observed at his own son's funeral, "Being dead is like being stupid. Everyone knows it but you."
But I've gotten pulses back from asystole. It's rare, but not unheard of. I've even seen patients recover from what everyone in the room thought was certain death. Some of them even walked out the front door some days later, to the astonishment of the doctors and staff.
But nobody - NOBODY - who comes in with feet the color of parchment, ever comes back.
I'm pretty sure while the spirit of the former person hovers around, while we all push drugs and do compressions, Death, courtesy of Terry Pratchett, shows up to put the final stamp of approval.
"Wow, I look pretty bad, I wonder if I'll..."
"NO. SORRY. YOU WON'T."
"Are you sure? I mean, I was pretty young and healthy and..."
"AS IF THAT MATTERS. BUT NO, I'M AFRAID NOT. LOOK AT YOUR FEET."
"Wow! Why are they so yellow?"
"BEGINNING TO BE RATHER OBVIOUS WHY, DON'T YOU THINK?"
"Oh. OH! Yeegads! So I'm really...?"
YES. QUITE. SHALL WE BE OFF, THEN? I'VE GOT SEVERAL MORE STOPS JUST YET THIS TRIP..."
And no matter how many more rounds of epi, and bicarb, and calcium, and whatnot, we give, nor how hard the tech is pumping your rib cage to circulate them around, once we see the parchment yellow Feet Of Death, it's because we just can't squeeze enough blood through your corpse to turn your tootsies that lovely shade of rose pink they ought to be, and would be, if you hadn't already toddled off with Death at some point annoyingly prior.
One minute you were coming home from a party, and the next thing you know, some bony-handed gentleman is dropping you off at the reception desk at the Pearly Gates.
And all the king's horses, and all the king's men, can't undo the rude unhinging of the mechanism of life visited upon you by Fate, Physics, and Physiology.
We're all really sorry about that. Hand to God, we are. But there's just some things we can't fix, and your fate was sealed long before you got to our back door, no matter how much everyone, including people we haven't even met yet, wish it were not so.
I really fucking hate that. I thought, long ago, that one day I might have gotten over it.
But this many decades in, I'm afraid that's just never going to happen. And I suppose if it ever does, that's the signal it's time to get out of this business for good.
It was a long night. It'll be better after I finally get some sleep.
Better still, after I spend a long, quiet day in the park enjoying fresh air, warm sunshine, and a brilliant blue sky, and see the things you can no longer see, and go to the places you will never again go.
But in the pitch darkness of 3 AM, it's just cold. And the only thing making it easier for me is knowing I'll never hear the moans and wails when your parents are located, and get the call no one wants to make, nor be there when the sheet comes back, and they see it's really you there on that table.
Seeing your yellow feet is bad enough. I'm oh so glad I don't have to see the whole show in this tragedy. And I'm really hoping it doesn't cross my mind again tomorrow night.
Sufficient unto each day are the troubles thereof.
O, you can just bet they are.
