resuscitation

life is motion, right?

many of us live in 2-D.  we stand up to awaken, we sit to work, we lay supine to sleep.  we hold a hand, one side's fingers interlaced with another. our time is linear.  point A to point B.
dr sutherland described the tide, a three-dimensional pulsation bathing our beings, an all-encompassing force greater than the to-and-fro within our vasculature, without which we could not exist.  dr jealous described the embryologic zones, a four-dimensional construct enabling him to describe why some of us are born and develop and live and die suffer and thrive the way we do in the physical world over the course of our existence.  the motion of development.  structure and function.  function and structure.

i always thought if i could have a superpower, it would be to fly and experience the world in three dimensions.  but on thursday, i discovered i had a different one.  it is the ability to experience it all in slow-motion.
i could hear my footsteps echoing much louder than they should for the soft shoes i was wearing, the sounds bouncing through my skull endlessly.  i could see in my periphery the bland walls moving by as i ran down the hall.  i could feel my heart stop as i saw the crash cart and ten million people in  my patient's room.  and then i could feel the entire world frozen, breathlessly immobile, as i saw them inside his room, standing over his bed, beating on his chest, yelling at each other, his feet flopping to and fro, keeping time.  his belly grotesquely distended. an impossible marionette.

and i saw, one by one, the faces of staff and family, as they crumpled in agonizing pain before all that was unfolding, in shock and disbelief.  i could see my patient's face as i remembered him when i saw him last night, wide smile, kind and forgiving eyes shielding his physical pain and the inner pain of the unknown, the known, and the realization he was too late. i could feel the soft warmth of his hand as i shook it for the last time.  i could feel the same hand gripping my throat and dragging my spine down into the floor as, after 45 minutes of cpr, he was pronounced.

what have i done.  what could i have done for you, P, that i did not have the knowledge or foresight to provide earlier?  could i have saved you?  could i have bought you precious time during which at least your family could come to your side and say their final goodbye?  have i robbed your family of that joy and sorrow and closure?

outside, the clouds moved briskly through the blue sky, and people toiled in the fields, and why am i still here and you are gone?

i feel you at my back.  i carry you with me always, as i do the faces of your loved ones.  it is heavy. and endless.