as i waited for her
mother to arrive, i stroked her cheek and let her know that she was
not alone. for the first twenty minutes, her chest heaved and she was
wild-eyed, lips parted but with no sound
escaping. of course there was
no sound...
here was a
girl 27 years old--a year
younger than me, two weeks out of a monthlong
coma with a
trach and a
feeding tube. here was a fighting
spirit in a
body that wouldn't cooperate.
and
she was
dying...
because she was a
no code, all i could do was make sure she wasn't
alone,
ponder why a
life had to
end like this, hope that her mother was able to look into the eyes of her only
child while some
life still remained,
wonder why
hemorrhage had two Hs.
the mind tends to
wander at
times like this. it's a
defense mechanism.
how can you not
grow attached to someone you've tucked into bed every night? how can you not take personally the
theft of a life that you have
fought to maintain?
you can't. but you also can't break down in front of the the person who gave her the
life that is
draining from her.
and as the
blood continued to flow, her
breathing slowed, her eyelids lowered, her lips closed and she relaxed some the grip on my hand. then her
mother came in the door.
i hugged her and had turned to leave the room when she asked me to
stay. she was trying so hard to maintain
composure as she spoke to her
child, the
love of her life. bent to her
daughter's ear, she whispered '
i love you'.
and a
life was gone.
i finished my shift, gave report to the oncoming
nurse and
cried the entire
drive home.
at
home, i picked up a magazine...
more
dying children--
leukemia.
cancer. as i stated last night, the
crumbling of the
temple of the soul.
i turned on the t.v.--more for
noise than anything else. i was thinking for a minute that my
thoughts, screaming through my mind, could be
drowned out. a story on
the news...
a
man...
an
innocent man--
imprisoned for 27 years. with his
family having
moved on and basically no
knowledge of life in this day, he is
released. he has
freedom, yes--but does he really? and the
jurors who stated "what else were we to do?"--home in bed each night with their families, probably with little, if any memory at all, of the trial that resulted in the decision that
deprived a man of everything except his very
existence.
so, i write...
and yes i chose an
overdone topic, seemingly, and i let
emotion overpower
reason. i think, though, that instead of or even before being
attacked for what was perceived as an
attack on my part, i should have been addressed.
last night's node was not a
challenge, was not an attack, was not intended as a
flame war. it was merely the world,
my world, at that moment,
through my eyes.