Induction

“I’m loving life right now,” I gloated. “I have a wicked cool wound that I get to dress when I get back, and I may get to hang blood if her hemoglobin and hematocrit levels are low enough.” We both sat down with an audible sigh, grateful to be off our feet for the first time all night, and ate dinner while chatting about all the new and exciting things we were learning.

After half an hour of gabbing, we headed back to our respective units to finish out the last part of the night. Halfway back I heard, “Code Blue, Emergency Room,” come through the loudspeaker and hastily made my way back.

The ER was in chaos. As I got closer, I realized it was coming from my patient’s room and started running. Ollie came out of a nearby room, jogging by my side as we burst into Mary’s room to find it packed with people and Mary lying flat on the bed with a nurse already performing chest compressions. The physician pointed at Ollie, “You! Do you know how to find a femoral pulse?”

Ollie nodded her head in affirmation and was instructed to switch places with another nurse and keep checking. Every thirty compressions, the nurse stopped and the physician asked Ollie if she felt anything. She gave a negative response each time.

He turned to me and barked, “You’re on compressions, switch out.”

My nervous system’s flight or fight response kicked in, increasing my heart rate and flooding me with adrenaline. My stomach turned to ice when I noticed everyone’s gaze focused on me, and I began compressions. The first thing I felt was squish. I remember reading that it was common to break ribs while performing CPR, but I had never imagined the mushy feeling I experienced.

I was singing the Bee Gee’s song “Stayin’ Alive” in my head to keep the right pace, or so I thought. I looked up for a millisecond and caught the look on Ollie’s face. Oh. My. God. I was singing out loud.

After five minutes, the physician called it, “Time of Death, twenty-three, forty-seven.” The statement was so powerful; one could almost hear the capitalization of his words.

He came over as the nurses and aides cleaned up the patient and surroundings. I jumped when he spoke to me, too caught up in what was going on around me to notice he had even moved. “That was your first time, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.” I looked at Mary. Her skin was grey, lips blue, and eyes vacantly open, staring at nothing.

“You did fine. I had you jump in because I knew it was over. We had been at it for fifteen minutes, but I wanted you to gain some experience.”

I looked down at my hands, mind racing. A woman’s life just ended right beneath my hands. I killed someone tonight. Someone that I had been having a normal conversation with a half hour ago was now dead. That’s the experience he wanted me to have? I mumbled something akin to thank you and left the room.

Our instructor sent us home for the night. We only had ten minutes left, so no big deal if we skipped out a bit early. I felt like I was in a fog. I couldn’t put words to what I felt in those moments following Mary’s death. Walking out, I vaguely remembered saying goodnight to Ollie and got into my car drenched from the rain. I didn’t see Kat, but I assumed she was still upstairs on the Ortho floor.

There was a weight to me when I slumped into the seat. My brain felt numb. I didn’t cry, but I mourned for Mary Jennings as I sat in the parking lot for what seemed an eternity. What happened? This woman with a wound on her arm was now dead. Even though I knew it wasn’t my fault, I felt like I let her down, like I had been the one who failed to save her.

Chapter 04 Snow Day

I drove home in silence and ruminated over the events of the night. The rain came down so heavy I could barely see out of the windshield. Tropical Storm Ike made its way up the Florida coastline and closer to my little town. Looking at myself in the rearview mirror at the last stoplight before home, I realized this was a gut-check moment and pulled myself out of the stupor. “Nut up, bitch. Grow a set and stop acting like a pussy,” I said out loud.

Jake was watching the same Vince Vaughn movie when I got home. I repeated my strip down from the night before and decompressed with a long, hot shower. When I got out, my phone beeped with a new text message. It was my mother-in-law asking where I was. I messaged her back, let her know I was home, and asked why she was texting me at one o’clock in the morning. Every time she sent a late night text, another one of Jake’s grandparents’ had passed away. I braced myself for bad news and was surprised when her text instructed me to turn on Channel 4 right away.

I went into the living room and dug the TV remote out of the sofa cushion, sat down next to Jake and changed the channel. “Hey, I was watching that!”

“It’s not like you can’t quote that stupid movie word for word. Your mother just told us to put on the… what the fuck?”