“Take him to trauma two,” the doctor said, handing off the chart to another physician. “We’ll wait for the next one,” he said to me. As I watched them wheel the first victim away, I’d started preparing myself for the worst. The stress of an ER rotation was always heavy, but with my mind already a mess, my stomach was in knots. My hands were slick with sweat. I rubbed them down the front of my scrubs as we waited in the bay for the next ambulance to arrive.
When it arrived, the back door opened and I could see a man on the stretcher. His blond hair was caked with blood and his eyes were closed. As they lowered him onto our gurney, I was immediately reminded of Brett. They had the same build. The same features. They were close to the same age. My feet were stuck in place as I reminded myself that it wasn’t him. I was quickly jolted back to reality as the gurney I was holding onto started to move.
“What do we have?” Dr. Clark asked the paramedics as we transferred the unconscious man from stretcher to stretcher. A gash along his left cheek had been closed up in route, but the tape and gauze were surely going to need to be replaced with stitches.
“Daniel Mitchell, age twenty-six.” Dr. Clark and I stood on each side of the stretcher. “Hasn’t regained consciousness since he was extracted from the vehicle.” I checked for a pulse and let out a sigh of relief when I heard it weakly beating through my stethoscope. He was still alive.
As we wheeled him into an exam room, Dr. Clark immediately started checking him for internal bleeding. I waited for my orders and tried to keep from imagining that it was Brett lying on that bed. It had been a shock to see him in the hospital when were just friends. When he’d hurt his knee, at least I knew that he was going to be okay. Imagining him in a situation like this was too much to bear.
An actual ER nurse joined us and she was far more qualified than I was—at least mentally. My hands were clammy and it felt like the air was thickening in the room, as I watched Dr. Clark’s face grow more and more unsure of Daniel’s condition.
“Doctor,” the nurse said when she opened his cut shirt and pulled back the bandage the medics had applied. “There’s bleeding.”
“We need to get him in to an OR now,” Clark called out. “Bennett,” he yelled as they were heading out the door. I snapped to attention and followed him as he kept pressure on the laceration that had started bleeding profusely. “Page Neuro and have them meet us there,” he said. “I’ve got a bad feeling that there’s damage to his brain. Pupils are dilated and unresponsive.”
“Yes sir,” I said.
“And try to find his next of kin,” he ordered. The nurse handed me the bag of personal items the first responders had sent along—a wallet and a cell phone. As I watched them wheel through the operating room doors, my chest was heavy. I now had the responsibility of finding this man’s family. I had to call and tell them that their son or husband was in an accident. Even worse, I had to tell them that his injuries were severe and that he’d been rushed into surgery.
The memories of learning what had happened to Jamie were mingling with my focus of tracking down this man’s family. I’d been at school the day the officers showed up at the Shaws’ house. I’d been blissfully unaware that he was dead for almost two hours after they’d left. Being the courteous student I was, I’d flipped my phone to silent and missed the call from Jamie’s father, but the second I saw his name on my screen I knew that something was wrong. It was ten in the morning, he should have been teaching Intro to Government to bored sophomores, not calling me and leaving a voicemail asking me to come to their house as soon as possible.
Now wasn’t the time for me to be thinking of my own loss. I had to find this man’s family and get them to the hospital. I turned on the cell phone and started to slide the button across to get to his contacts. My eyes focused on his screen saver. A photograph of him and his beautiful family. His wife, a lovely woman, and two small children, a girl and a boy. My heart was both full and broken at the same time. Their smiling faces and the obvious love they had for one another was right there in front of me in their genuine smiles and embraces. I choked back my dread and put the phone back in the bag. I should have just pulled his wallet first and saved myself the heartache of seeing his happy family’s photograph. I pulled up his file on the computer and searched for an emergency contact.
JULIA MITCHELL
I had a job to do. I had to call this unsuspecting woman, whose face was now fresh in my head, and tell her that her whole world might be on the verge of an irrevocable change.
“Hello,” her voice said when I dialed her number. I quickly blotted the tears from my eyes and tried to have some composure.
“Mrs. Mitchell,” I said, my voice breaking a little. I reminded myself to stay calm. If I sounded stressed, it would only make it worse for her.
“Yes.”
“I’m calling from Trinity Medical,” I said. She gasped. “I’m afraid that your husband has been in an accident. We’re going to need you to come down here as soon as possible.”
“What do you mean? Is he all right?”
“He’s in surgery now,” I said. “We’ll fill you in as soon as you get here.”
“I’m on my way,” she said. A sob broke from her end of the phone before it went dead.
I knew exactly what she was feeling. I had started crying the second I walked into Jamie’s house and saw his mother’s face. I felt helpless and hopeless, much like I’m sure Julia felt. At first she felt like the air was sucked from her lungs. Like she couldn’t catch her breath, no matter how hard she tried. The heaviness in her chest would be replaced with an ache, slowly squeezing her heart, and threatening to crush it. That would stick with her for days, weeks, months even. She was going to feel like she didn’t know which end was up. Like she was living in a nightmare that she couldn’t wake up from.
As I waited for her to arrive, I ran over to the operating room and looked through the windows. It was chaos. The rush of everyone’s movements. The worry in their eyes. I saw Dr. Clark pull the paddles from the cart next to him and yell, “Clear!”
I couldn’t watch. All I could do was think about Julia driving to hospital and what it would be like if I were in her shoes. If something happened to Brett, I wouldn’t even be able to get to the hospital quickly. He was a thousand miles away. I wouldn’t be on his list of emergency contacts and I’d never even met his family.
I wasn’t his wife. I wouldn’t have been called and on my way like Julia was. She wouldn’t even be able to remember how she got here—her sole focus was on her husband and getting to him as quickly as possible.
Dr. Clark walked out of the operating room and tossed his scrubs and gloves—covered with blood—into the bin outside the door.
“There was too much damage,” he said, when he saw my face. “We tried everything.”
“His wife is on her way,” I told him.
He nodded as he walked toward the front of the emergency room. The moment I saw her walk through the automatic doors—I knew it was her. The smile that I’d seen was now replaced with fear and uncertainty as she walked into the hospital, carrying her young daughter. She couldn’t have been more than two years old. I watched as Julia nearly crumbled in Dr. Clark’s arms. I heard her cries as I walked into an empty on-call room and closed the door behind me.
My system was flooded. The overwhelming emotions that I thought I had put behind me were back. I was stupid to think that I was strong enough to handle a life with Brett. I could barely handle the life of a patient’s family.
My tears fell freely as I thought about how Julia’s life would be changed. She was going to have to go home to her children and tell them that they would never see their father again. She was going to have to try and move on with her life. She’d think she was having moments of acceptance. She’d think about how grateful she was to be alive, or when she looked into the eyes of her children, but the truth was it was going to take her years to compartmentalize it all. When she did, when she thought that just maybe she could be happy again, something would happen and all the pain that she felt now would overtake her. Just like it had done to me.