The Silence that Haunts Me
I trudged into the ER at 7:00 on a frigid Saturday morning, four days before Christmas, wanting nothing more than to go back home and crawl back into bed. I had a flight to California later that day, and I wanted to be well-rested before traveling. Unfortunately, my EMT instructor had other plans.
Before being certified as an EMT in New Jersey, you are required to shadow an ER nurse for at least ten hours. The rule is actually a good one because it allows EMTs to see what happens after they drop patients off, and I think makes us more empathetic to the nurses, doctors, and other medical staff that attend to the patients needs as we drive back to our stations and file our paperwork. I completed my required ten hours in the form of two five-hour shifts. This was the last of my five-hour shifts, and my instructor had given me the only shift available- 7:00 am. I remember reading the email she had sent me about my time slot and groaning. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed shadowing the ER nurses, but I was never a morning person by any means, and a shift at 7:00 am meant waking up at 5:30 am to get ready and be there on time.
I walked into the blindingly white hall, just as patients were being wheeled in. A thin, old woman wearing a stained gray cardigan was strapped onto a stretcher looking pale and nervous. A little boy, no more than 5-years-old, was sitting on one of the worn-down black chairs outside one of the patients’ rooms.
I set my stuff down in the nurse’s lounge, hoping that my shift would be effortless and straightforward. I felt a pang of guilt about wanting to get it over with, but truthfully I was more excited to be going to California and spending time with family. The strong smell of coffee mingled with the scent of industrial strength cleaning supplies helped wake me up as I got ready for the five hours to come.
I barely stepped out of the lounge before the nurse I was shadowing, Chris, charged into me.
“Annika! Heart attack! 32! Come!” he belted out breathlessly before grabbing my arm and dragging me to room 32.
It was the holiday season, which meant that the ER was short-staffed. Three nurses had gone on vacation, another two called in sick with the flu, and the replacement nurses had not yet shown up. That left Chris, me, a scribe, and the doctor in the room.
The patient was a paunchy old man. There were wires and tubes running into his arms and legs- one of them bright yellow, another blue, and the rest clear. His eyes were open, and I watched as Chris rushed over and taped them shut. My muscles tensed up, and I felt myself let out a gasp. Chris started CPR while I handed the doctor a small needle, a narrow tube, and what seemed like an endless supply of small syringes containing a clear fluid, which I later learned was epinephrine to help the man’s heart.
Around two minutes later, Chris called out to me, and nodded down at the man’s body, gesturing for me to take over. Immediately, my CPR training rushed back to me and I switched with Chris, performing CPR on the man. As I was pressing my hands into the man’s chest, I realized how different CPR on a person was compared to a mannequin. I felt the sweat on the palms of my hands and was surprised at how easily the chest compressed compared to the rigid plastic of the mannequin I had practiced a hundred times on. I also felt a few slight cracks, indicating that the man’s ribs were breaking. While practicing on the mannequins, I used to get tired easily, but while performing CPR on the man, it felt effortless. I focused on pressing to a consistent rhythm, immersed in the beeping of the monitors around me.
After 30 minutes of CPR, we weren’t able to revive the man. The tape was taken off his eyes, the wires were carefully removed from his body, and a thin blue sheet was placed over his body. The doctor stepped outside to talk to the man’s wife as Chris and I picked up the crinkly plastic wrappers that were thrown haphazardly on the floor. The monitors were turned off, and there was an impenetrable silence that surprised me and emphasized the loss we had suffered. As I left the room, I knew I was going to be haunted by the silence.
