Why I do what I do

I'm numb. Not quite sure if it is a defense mechanism or a natural response, but all I know is that I don't really remember getting in my car and driving home, only that I made it safely (thank you God). I wonder if the patient's family will even remember me in the despairing haze they are in; if the wife will ever know how terrified I am to someday be in her shoes, or how hard it was for me to tell her that the cardiologist is doing everything he can but that it doesn't look hopeful; if I will ever forget the look in her eyes when she realized she would never see her husband alive again and never got to say goodbye. I wonder what it is like to look back and wish you had never let your child go to that party, ride with that friend, stay out that late. I pray I never draw pity from the ER staff with wailing lamentations over my child's dead body. I hope I am always able to encourage my fellow nurses and remind them that "when you stop feeling the need to vomit and cry after one of these, you've just worked your last day as a good nurse in the ER".

Those of you who have worked the ER know the look of your fellow nurses when you come on shift after a kid has died. Everyone has a mild version subconsciously plastered on their face, but you can instantly pick out the one who ran the trauma as soon as they walk by. The barren futility in their eyes, the searching of their mind, the continuous replay while they mindlessly continue on with the requisite duties to finish charting; all working towards the moment when one of two things happen: someone has the compassion to open the release valve and listen, or they finally get to go home and deal with it on their own. I learned something today--even experienced nurses, ones I thought knew so much more than I, still need to hear that it's okay to want to stick a straw in a bottle of wine, cry, throw up, and resent the teenagers who come in hours afterward and hate their lives.

I realized something today, as simple and evident as it may be; I can never allow myself to fall into the complacency of life and forget to tell my husband how desperately I love him. I need that dose of reality, albeit at the expense of someone else's anguish, to slap me in the face and whisper in my ear how blessed I am to go home to an extraordinary man. I am a selfish woman; I do what I do not because I fall asleep at night knowing I have made a difference in someone else's life, but because of the precious moments when someone else reminds me how to live.