Trauma Room Two

by Philip Allen Green

I watch their entire universe collapse in on itself. It explodes apart in front of me. Their lives disintegrate and scatter, like dust in the wind, into a thousand pieces, a thousand directions. My three words obliterate everything about who they are, who they were, and who they will be.

It is made to withstand the doing of terrible things, all in the hope of achieving something wonderful.

If a case is too traumatic, too upsetting, and I close off all emotions, it can be weeks before the feeling part that makes me who I am returns.

As the blood pumped, I imagined tiny hemoglobin soldiers running as fast as they could with fresh oxygen molecules strapped to their backs. They leaped over other cells, slid through corners, and dived into starving, dying, perishing organs with their critical supplies.

Today is the forty-second time he has been in this emergency department in the last twelve months. Not one of those times has he ever been sober. Nor does it look like he is today.

This is why I became a doctor. Not because I can stitch a wound, manage a trauma, or splint an arm. No, I became a doctor to be with people when it matters the most. I did it so that I can stand at the edge of the cliff with another human being and we can gaze out together into the night beyond. I did it because I, too, am afraid. I did it because I want to find some way to lessen the fear—not just for me but for all of us.

is sad and wonderful and terrible and beautiful to hold the hand of a dying person.

First, it is OK to be afraid. That is normal. Second, introduce yourself, use your first name. Third, hold the person’s hand as he or she departs this life. That will be enough.

How many times have promises been made by people who have no way of knowing what it is they promise? Oaths are sworn based on the abstract idea that love and discipline can win out over age and disease. Sometimes love and discipline do. But more often than not, the promises end up being ropes, the same ropes that guilt uses to lasso families into bad choices and decades of pain. Dementia is the worst of all—a disease that seems to feed on promises and guilt. When you find dementia, you find a family haunted by the impossible choices before them.

Sometimes the roughest part of what I do is getting out of bed each day knowing an onslaught of suffering is barreling toward me. Yet, there is nothing I can do about it.

There are certain things I cannot write about. There are certain things which I will not write about. They are too terrible to share. It is my job sometimes to just keep them to myself. So be it. The next several minutes of that day are holy, private, and terrible. And they shall remain that way forever. Only those of us there that day should be burdened with what we saw. We will carry it for you. We will carry it for everyone.