The ER was eerily silent as
the mother burst in on the proceedings, joining the panicked father and African
au pair huddled helplessly in the back.
A lifetime of hospital TV
shows has demonstrated that the noise level in these situations is
proportionate to the urgency of the medical emergency, so the near silence was
somehow comforting--no music blared, no screaming ‘beep’ of heart monitors, no
cursing doctors screaming “stat” at nurses. Only occasional footfalls and the
softly mumbled words of the medical team were audible.
Comforting of course only to
the untrained and optimistic. You
never really think it’ll be your child intubated and splayed out on a table
with ten or so medical professionals, quietly, seemingly calmly, hovering over
him. The proceedings were surreal to begin with (how quickly lives can take a
hard left turn, change forever), and for the unneurotic mother the relative
silence was a good thing, somehow outweighing the incontrovertible evidence her
eyes didn’t believe anyway.
Tragedy does not come
quietly. (Right?)
Minutes ticked by, the
doctors and nurses kept working…the father kept quietly pleading, to himself,
to his wife, “why won’t they tell us what’s going on?”
She had no answer. Called at work in the city, she knew
her son had collapsed after waking from his afternoon nap and that the EMTs had
some problem getting a line in him at their house, such that she didn’t arrive
at the E.R. much after the ambulance.
Still, it’ll be okay. It has to be—it’s just a virus of some kind going
around school, this doesn’t make sense.
Her confidence in the
fairness of the universe was such that after she called her mother on the car
ride out, she also made a client call, thereby enabling her both to make productive
use of the time while also distracting her from worry.
Later she wondered if that
particular client ever figured out she was the last person spoken to before
that hard left turn.
As she waited and watched, a
slow panic crept in. Has he had
enough air? What if his brain is oxygen deprived? Latching on to this worst-case scenario, she tried hard not
to freak out.
(Children don’t “just die” in
affluent suburban emergency rooms for no good reason. Would these doctors and nurses work here if they did?)
Suddenly, the tableau
shifted. A doctor left the table,
slowly walked towards the couple and their babysitter. They pulled themselves together,
awaited his answers, his comfort.
“I’m sorry, we’ve done all we
can.”
Later she remembered he
really had looked sorry—this couldn’t have been the highlight of his
workweek.
But in that moment, reality
replaced denial and her brain checked out, leaving the heart to decide the best
way to honor this tragedy was in breaking the now absolutely unbearable silence.
Despite the staff’s best
efforts to whisk her onto a gurney and sequester her behind closed doors,
the screams were heard throughout the E.R.
