there's something so hot about those last few minutes when the team is considering calling time on a resusee. when the victim has been down for a half hour with no change, maybe not even their first arrest, no reaction to any interventions.
they're intubated and vented and on the LUCAS. still in the chaotic wreck of a trauma bay. life suspended without a flurry of hands. there is nothing else that can be done. all else has been tried.
the team of doctors and nurses and medical staff have al but given up. still holding out hope, but part of them knows it is hopeless. they stand a pace away from the body on the table. waiting. watching the monitor. watching as the only activity is the violent beating of the LUCAS on the poor patient's heart.
the patients chest caves in, ribs shattered and sternum cracked under dozens of rounds of compressions from hands and the LUCAS alike. the piston is relentless. beating in the patients poor sternum to pump the heart. their belly bulges with each one, violently slow, even in the most toned of patients, just because of how forceful the compressions are on such a slack body.
their eyes are staring at nothing. all the light has left. their mouth is held open by tubes and airways and gauze ties. their throat pulses with agonal gasps and gags and spasms, that and the harsh pulsing of the LUCAS. their chest shifts with each breath given.
they're shirtless. abandoned on the gurney. chest, bruised and broken, on display. perhaps glossy from conductive jelly. or maybe AED pads cling uselessly to the lifeless chest.
their arms strewn out and hanging with IV lines from when efforts were still being made, when there were efforts that could be made. there's fluids hanging to one. a syringe of epi still connected to another, about to fall from the bed and hang from the hub line.
there's a sheet over their legs, it's soiled with urine, as a catheter was first an afterthought, and now placing one feels like one last insult to the patient's dignity. hours of resuscitative work, from this code and the codes prior, have kept their struggling kidneys producing fluids that the bladder has failed to retain during the ins and outs of their weak heartbeat.
their skin has lost all warmth. it's greying and cold. their lips are a shade ranging from crimson purple to nearly white, depending on their prior complexion. their eyes have sunken in. there is no life to be found in their face.
and yet still. the LUCAS pumps pumps and pumps away. the ventilator hissssss. click. hissssss. clicks over and over. the two in tandem.
the doctor eyes the clock. one more minute. then his watch. just one more, they can do it. a nurse looks back.
vaporwave
dailybridgerton
theartofmadeline
blakekathryn
romaincrisis
