barely left my mouth before everything went haywire. As they tried to intubate him, the still unconscious Tucker looked like he was struggling to draw a breath, and then the machines started beeping erratically. Jonah only took a moment to look shocked before he jumped into action.
“Get a crash cart!” he yelled at me, and I didn’t need to be told twice.
He started preparing for manual compressions, and I said a prayer for poor Tucker who couldn’t die, not like this. I grabbed the cart and paged the crash team, who were hopefully floating around the ER. I darted back into the room to see the anaesthesiologist had gone leaving Jonah alone, and I hoped it was for a damn good reason.
“Get me the damn ECG,” Jonah said, and suddenly there was more blood than before.
Jonah was moved aside by the crash team, who flooded the room and spoke in a fast way that I imagined made sense only to them.
I pulled the ECG up on the computer screen as we were shunted into the hall and showed it to Jonah. He clicked through the lines, moment by moment, and finally—
“Oh shit,” Jonah muttered. “Shit, I should have seen it.”
He pointed to the screen, and if he hadn’t shown it to me, I wouldn’t have seen it either—certainly not in an emergency setting. On Tucker’s ECG, you could see where the heart had begun to slow and the moment where we began to intubate, and he’d arrested.
“Cardiac tamponade,” I muttered.
Jonah was horrified with himself, and despite the fact that we both had places we should have been, despite the fact that we knew life had to go on, the two of us stood outside the room staring inside and watched a man die.
Everything was in place for Jasmine’s surgery.
Everyone in the hospital was whispering about it, and Adrian had carefully chosen an elite team for the operation. I had the honor that no other intern did of watching the whole thing happen from the OR itself, and yet I couldn’t get myself to focus.
He had died, Tucker, and I had watched it happen. Of course, I’d known death was a very real possibility in the hospital, and I had thought I was prepared for that eventuality. I thought that I’d be able to handle it, and at least not be a mess.
Instead, I was hiding. I was in the basement next to the laundry bins, only a few feet away from the morgue where I had dropped off the body—Tucker. It was quiet and cool down there, and I slid to the floor, letting my head rest on the wall behind me.
I was a coward and I admitted it to myself. I had left Jonah and the crash team to face the woman who had burst in, eyes frantic, with a pre-teen following close behind and clutching the hand of a kid who was barely out of diapers. I couldn’t stay and watch what was going to happen. The wail of despair I’d heard as I walked away was too much already, and so I found myself borderline panicking in the basement, with tears streaming down my face and my hands clasped around my knees. Everything was awful. I had to get myself together. I couldn’t miss the opportunity to be in the theater for what was about to happen, but I just felt so...conflicted.
I breathed in and out, trying to open up an airway that felt increasingly tight. I let out a whimper, and let my head fall onto my knees. I had no energy to get up and certainly didn’t have the energy to walk up to the OR and stand there for hours, watching Adrian working over Jasmine.
“What the hell is wrong with me?” I groaned.
This was all I ever wanted.
“You’re an intern,” a voice came.
I looked up and, where I was sandwiched between two of the massive laundry dumpsters, Adrian appeared. His face was soft, searching mine. I wanted to let all my walls down, tell him why he scared me so much, why I was so afraid of letting him in.
“So, I won’t be a mess in a year?” I asked with a watery voice.
Adrian wedged himself in next to me, and the proximity was suffocating to my already labored breaths.
“Nah, you’ll still be a mess, and every death is going to hit you differently. But the longer you’re a doctor, the easier it will be to process the losses.”
I stared up at the ceiling,