The ER

The last day of our electives with Sir Jenel saw us at the Emergency Room of JBL. My heart started pounding when I heard Sir say that we'll be having our duty there instead of the Pedia Ward because the last time I was there was when we went to see Peter and Paul. I kept going from one patient to the next, trying to totally avoid even looking at a certain area where, had I looked for more than a split second, I could imagine my cousins' bloody white blanket covered bodies.

Then they brought her in. Her eyes were open, face already cyanotic. The moment I saw her, my mind went blank. I literally tried to block her being there out. But couldn't. I heard her mother crying, telling the doctor that her daughter just hit her head last night but that she was alright so they didn't think of bringing her to the hospital. The doctor checked her and pronounced her Dead On Arrival. It's hard not to show emotion while hearing and seeing her mother plead for the doctor to do something, anything, just not pronounce her 17 year old daughter dead.

Seems they took around 30 minutes to get to the hospital. Having just come from BLS training at Red Cross, I wondered if anyone tried giving her CPR while en route to the hospital coz maybe it could have helped somehow. But then maybe it wouldn't have mattered coz she did hit her head. Trauma to the brain is really hard to treat.

They pushed the bed she was lying on at the same corner where we saw my cousins' bodies. The ER was very eerily quiet. Everyone spoke in hushed tones while listening to the mother call practically everyone in the family in her cellphone telling them the sad news.

I didn't cry even when I wanted to right then, I instead started talking to patient who was in front of me. Made myself busy. I could have cried. Coz I know how that feels like. Literally. I know how it feels like to lose loved ones so abruptly. I think it's the quick ones that hurt more, you know, the ones where you've just been talking to a person then learn an hour later that they've died... that hurts more, I think, than when you've had months or even years of adjusting to the idea that someone you love is sick and dying from a terminal disease.

Ah crap... I hate the ER. But then, call it masochismbut I want to work there when I graduate. Or at least volunteer and train there. Dunno why I feel like that though.