I left a message on your voicemail in the middle of the night, told you to call back, my voice just this side of breathless. It was the end of my shift so we never spoke, but when you called back, panicked and fearing the worst, I know what was said. We told you he died in the middle of the night, that we tried for 45 minutes to bring him back, that we couldn’t.
We didn’t tell you that you tried to get up when your heart went into the arrhythmia, confused and not yourself. We didn’t tell you that you were too big up lift up to the bed. We didn’t tell you that your chest tubes got dislodged and when I walked in there was blood all over the floor. We didn’t tell you that we coded him on the floor on our knees, covered in his blood. We didn’t tell you after a few rounds of chest compressions you got a pulse back briefly, fought us, that it took all of us to keep you still.
We didn’t tell you how the blood from your fresh incision kept soaking through the defibrillator pads. How many, many times we shocked you. How there was no one from your primary team in the hospital so I had to call your wife, barely remembering your name. How we worked on your for 45 minutes, pushes dose after dose of epinephrine, of bicarb, of amio. How we knew you were dead but kept going because you were so young. How we cycled in and out, over and over, bringing our whole weight out over your chest, pushing your sternum in.
How they waited until I called you to end the code. How the 45 minutes seemed to pass like seconds. How we felt your body stiffen and cool beneath our gloves. How after time there was no rhythm left to shock. How when we were done the floor was covered in blood and gloves and plastic, empty vials of dispensed meds, sharps all piled to the side. How we wrestled your body in the Hoyer left so you could lie in the bed until they came to bathe your body, to take you downstairs.
How it was an hour from the end of my shift and how we washed the blood off our sweaty bodies and went back to the rest of our patients. How your surgeon showed up 45 minutes later and seemed to imply that we hadn’t done enough. How she walked away from that room, shoulders hunched. How I spent my drive home wondering if that was anything else we could have done.
How I sleep poorly, as expected. How I wake up seeing you, still. How familiar I’ve been come with the cold, dead, naked body. How familiar the way the blood drains from the skin, how it happens before my eyes. How did I become this woman, dreamer and harbinger and dealer in death.
