“Let’s call it. 17:14”
An unrehearsed moment of silence.
“This won’t be an ME case, so you can pull everything, Clare”
I automatically start printing flat-lines from the heart monitor.
“Ok, I’ve got all I need, you can clear it out.”
And then I’m alone in the room with the body of the man I was trying to resuscitate only minutes earlier. I start pulling off his clothing, draping a sheet, and close his eyelids. I don’t like the eye part. But even then, I feel nothing. That sort of bothers me - the fact that I feel nothing.
“Clare, the wife and children are all here. You ready?”
I head back towards the family room. I think the doctor’s already been back. I don’t know, can’t find him. Do they already know?
“His heart stopped in the ambulance. We did everything we could – but it never regained spontaneous activity. He passed at 17:14. It was just his time.”
My words are like vapor. Is that all I can say? His time? What is that even supposed to mean? That’s when I feel something. When I have literally nothing worth saying to someone who has lost a loved one.
Hours later, different room, different doctor. Eighteen year old, first pregnancy, six weeks and bleeding.
“Clare, can you set her up for a pelvic?”
I get my patient ready. She wasn’t bleeding heavily. Routine, I assumed.
“Have you passed any tissue, ma’am?” The doctor turns to me for forceps. “Because what I’m seeing here, I believe is the product of conception.”
Clump. Into the trashcan. More clump.
“Yes … I mean, I can’t be sure – I have to review that ultrasound report, but it’s looking as though we’re getting some tissue, products of conception being passed. You can get dressed ma’am. I’ll come back once I read that report.”
“Did you understand what he was saying?” My patient hasn’t said a word.
“I … I don’t think so. I don’t know”
What do you say? You had a miscarriage? That’s about as comforting as ‘what’s in the trashcan, is basically your dead baby.’
And why me? Why am I, the new nurse, left in the room with this girl, her douche bag boyfriend, and this awkward silence. Thanks, doc. Way to step up to the plate. Go check your little report. Your important stuff. I’ll do my nursing thing, and make up something, something Kubler-Ross-ish, that sounds all therapeutic, but means nothing.
Pull everything. Clear it out. Product of conception?
Is that all we are? A product of conception, easily wiped away, erased from memory, tucked into a vault. Vapor.
Is that why I feel nothing? Or is that why I can’t fall asleep later?
“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” (Psalm 139:13, 16)
If this isn’t true, what’s the point? We run so far from God during life, trying to control it. But the joy of its beginning and pain at its end speak of our created existence.
“A time to be born and a time to die … a time to mourn and a time to dance. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart” (Ecclesiastes 3:2, 4, 11).
Maybe I do have something to say…
