Finding Absolution in the Flow

You tried to quit twice before it finally stuck. The first time was after the medics brought in the kid from the pool party. He was wearing a baggy blue swimsuit and was still wet. The EMTs had that look when they rolled in. The look that says they expect you to save this kid who was in the pool for God knows how long before the drunk adults noticed him floating there and called 911. You are a doctor, so you can save him despite the rectal thermometer that flashed an impossible number. A temperature equal to the water in a summer pool. The fixed and dilated pupils, eyes staring into infinity, told you that the brain had stopped working. The body’s systems, leaderless, were untethered, no longer a coordinated orchestra. But for the medics, mostly, you went through the motions. They had worked hard, and you needed to let them down gently. He was a kid. It was easy to intubate, start the IV, push the same drugs the medics had pushed through the needle they drilled into the marrow of his shin bone. The kid was dead. You knew it. The nurses knew it. The medics knew it too, but they wanted you to be the one to say the words that made it true. Your work, the IV, the tube, the meds, gave them absolution. Your pronouncements were the Hail Marys and Our Fathers of the sordid little service. It wasn’t the first time you pronounced a kid. Nor was it the first time you walked into the dingy little room with the torn plastic chairs and told a mother her child was dead, waited through the wail, the anger, the guilt, the recriminations. This time should have been no different, but somehow it was.