It had been a good forty-five minutes that I had hunched by her side, carefully sewing up her wrist. The effort she made to end her life was not very successful, to say the least. The usual noise of the ED was muffled in this room, door shut and curtain drawn. All that was left was the metallic click of my instruments, and her throaty voice.
I barely looked up at her face while I worked, but I could feel her gaze burning into my forehead. I was afraid to make eye contact, lest their sadness appear too familiar. I asked her what she had to live for. Whether or not she was close to her family. If she thought they would miss her if she died. Each answer was a variation of the same: "I was cold. I was so cold, and I felt useless, like nobody cared."
I shared with her some stories. She replied, "They don't understand people like you and me."
Her skin was paper thin, fragile. Every bite of the needle felt like it would rip her to shreds. It took some revision, manipulation, hemming and hawing to place 12 stitches into that large jagged laceration, and three more elsewhere. I wanted to leave her with as little memory of the event on her body as I could muster, in my limited experience with repairs. Time had stopped in that small white exam room. There was nothing in the universe but our conversation, and the heavy silences in between. We were Moses and the burning bush. We were Adam and God. We were the darkness and the universe, bitter and sweet, despair and triumph.
Shortly after i finished her lac repair, my shift ended. I never saw her again.
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