The First Death Clinton Lee

The First Death

Clinton Lee Creative Writing Celebration: Memoir, 1st Place

As a medic you learn to live with Death. You spend just as much time with him as you do with your own family, maybe more. You learn to ignore him, pretend that he’s not screaming at you like a toddler as you clean up his mess. After a while, shootings and stabbings become a highlight of your week in dinner conversations, suicides become a nuisance, and picking up body parts becomes a chore. When I escape to the pub for a drink, or a friend introduces me to someone, the conversation goes to the inevitable cookie cutter question, “What do you do?” I say I am a medic. They get excited at that answer, something a little different than the average nine to five. I feel proud that I spend my days trying to save people. My pride swells when their reaction shows the same. Then the conversation predictably goes towards the darker questions that are in the back of everyone’s curious grey matter. How many dead bodies have I seen? What is the worst thing I’ve witnessed? I once thought they really wanted to know the answers. I described a couple scenes from the depths of my memory. Ones that I know will never leave me. I call them my “Ghosts.” I think it is a term many medics use. The ones that our old mate Death has played with in such an imaginative way that the images will haunt us for eternity. I give them the answers they like to prod for. As I give them every detail, in a way that only a seasoned writer could manage, I see a change in their demeanor. Their cheery smile turns to disgust. I see them holding back the bile in their mouths. As the description comes to an end, they try to plaster on their lost smile, thank me, then try and think of an excuse to step away and recover. I feel like an amusement park ride. I sit there, lonely with my drink after the ride is over. But now I am not alone. I have woken up one of my Ghosts from the darkness. It is me, the Ghost, and my beer, as I am forced to relive whatever brutal death it suffered, over and over again, until I have drunk enough to once again put it to sleep. I don’t know how many dead bodies I have seen. It seems like a simple question, able to be answered with a simple number. It’s not.

Maybe in the beginning it was, but now the answer is filled with incomprehensible complexities, mostly caused by my mental survival mechanisms. Bodies are not dead until they are pronounced dead. I kept them alive until the hospital. The doctor pronounced them dead. They are not dead, yet. Yes they are, I know they are. The family knows they are. But how do you tell a family that their loved one, their blood, their life, is dead? Sometimes that is worse than the dead body itself. Out of all the gut wrenching scenes, forgotten by medics, created by Death, there is one that never leaves a medic: their first. I know my first will never leave me. It wasn’t particularly bloody, or as violent as some of the deaths I encountered. This one was in a hospital. An elderly Hispanic lady on life support, surrounded by family. If there is one thing that I admire most about Hispanic culture, it is their show of love towards family. They pride themselves with how many of their family shows up in time of illness and need. A show of love that can fill up many rooms. The family was all there for this woman. The RN and I, after looking over this woman for who knows how long, were given the order to pull the plug.

I didn’t know how to react. I tried to say something, to make any noise. My mouth was open. But nothing. The RN took the lead saying, “Come on, we have to go.” I found myself repeating this sentence over and over in my head as I followed in tow to the room with the woman. To the room with all her family. Time seemed to stop as we entered. Seconds seemed like minutes, minutes seemed like hours. It gave me time to take note of every face in the room, every single detail. All conversation stopped. All eyes pointed at me. All eyes, wet with grief and fear, staring straight at me, including the small children. I knew what they saw. I saw the same thing. Death was leading us, with a chain, shackled to our necks. He led us straight to the woman. Machines clicking away all around the frail frame. A tube shoved down her throat, administering artificial respiration. That was the sound that stood out most to me. I found myself standing next to her, staring at her, watching the breath forced in and out. In. Out. The voice of the RN took me out of the trance, “It’s time for everyone to say their last goodbyes.” I could feel the breath sucked out of the room in that instant. I could swear the respirator paused for an unnatural second. A few moments passed that seemed like eternity, then the eldest stepped next to me. Next to her.

It must have been the woman’s younger sister; I could only guess what each person’s relation was to the woman. She held her hand for a moment, kissed her forehead and whispered something in Spanish to her. The sister erupted into tears, the room soon to follow. Everyone bawling and saying goodbye. When everyone was done one of the males spoke up and asked me, “Will she feel pain?” I opened my mouth and the same nothingness came out as before … I think the seasoned RN saw me and my struggle. The RN told everyone, “No. No she won’t.” Then he turned to me and said, “Pull out the tube Clinton, it is time.” I was shaking. I shouldn’t be shaking. This is my job, this is who I am. The family needs me to be strong. I have to be the anchor for everyone to hold onto. A storm is coming. Doing my best to control my shaking hands, I took an empty 10 cc syringe, placed it on the designated port of the endotracheal tube. Using the same technique I have been trained so many times to do, pulled on the plunger of the syringe, deflating the balloon holding the tube in the proper anatomical location. I unscrewed the clamp holding the tube to her mouth. Pulled off the tape that was used to secure the tube in the start of the process thought to help save her life. I shut off the machine and pulled out the tube. I realized the seasoned RN was in the background answering the many questions everyone had. Describing in detail what was going on. It was all just white noise to me in that moment. All I could do was watch her last attempts to gulp breath. Each attempt weaker than the last.

The answer the RN first gave to the family wracked my mind, “Will she feel pain?” “No. No she won’t.” Humans are weird creatures. We think we know all there is to know about the body. We have machines to read every electrical impulse in the mind. Then people sit around discussing what they think those impulses mean and come up with some conclusion that cannot be proved. For all we know about the mind, we truly know nothing. “No. No she won’t.” I looked up at the family after she gulped her last breath. “No. No she won’t.” I realized then that the answer was not one from a science book. The answer was for the family. My hands never shook again after that day. I must be the anchor.