Shift

2. John

"Pushing the epi."

"Tube!"

"Light!"

It kept playing over and over inside my head.

"She's in V-fib."

The frantic beeping of the monitors...

"Ventilate!"

The toddler lying on the bed...

"Paddles!"

...one IV going on each arm...

"Clear!"

Five people rushing through the protocol to resuscitate her...

"Clear!"

The ECG line remained flat.

I kept wondering if there was anything else I could have done. What if...?

Over those images, the parents'. Crying in horror, in disbelief. They'd been twenty four seven by her bedside for the last three days. They had walked away for a moment to get some coffee, a short reprieve. When they'd come back, there was nothing to come back to.

Elbows on my desk, I grabbed my hair and squeezed, stopping short of pulling it off. I'd given my everything to save this girl, and yet...

I felt powerless, and I felt rage. Rage against myself for the guilt I insisted on feeling, rage at those parents, rage at everything in the world for being so... meaningless.

This wasn't my first time losing a patient, not even the first loss of a child-patient. I'd been a doctor for seven years now, it was only natural. Yet, it doesn't seem to get any easier. It gets harder and harder every time.

Maybe I just wasn't meant to be a doctor at all. It had been my choice, for the most part. I had joined med school willingly.

Then, there had been this time when I'd considered giving up medicine, joining the family business and work in finance. I'd felt some pressure, then. My parents had already warmed up to the idea of having a doctor in the family - I was the first one - and to the kind of status that brought along.

So, I'd convinced myself I was just going through a phase, and went forward. The work was actually stimulating, so I kept going, telling myself that I'd get used to all the misery, the deaths, the guilt, that I'd learn to focus on the good parts. I kept telling myself that someday I would be able to turn off my work brain to leave ample space to mind my personal life, that I'd be able to forget about my suffering patients, for whom I'd done everything in my power already, as long as I could go back home at the end of the day and snuggle up in bed with Aiden.

Seven years...

A knock on the door pulled me out of it.

"Dr. Raynor?"

I smiled despite myself.

"Aiden."

The only person I wouldn't yell out of there in that moment. The one I couldn't place in a meaningless world.

He came in, we flirted as usual.

I thought I had managed to dodge the subject. And then...

"Are you telling me what happened, though?"

There are those people who become nurses because they can't get in med school, because they can't get out of med school, because they think it might be cool, or because they just can think of nothing else to do with their lives.

Aiden is none of those. He's a natural caregiver. He will take care of you even when you don't want him to, even when you think you don't need taking care of. He's the perfect nurse. That's what made me fall in love with him in the first place, back when I was still an intern.