After great pain, a formal feeling comes--
The Nerves sit ceremonious like Tombs--
The stiff Heart questions-- was it He that bore?
And yesterday-- or centuries before?
The Feet, mechanical, go round
A Wooden way,
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought,
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone.
This is the Hour of Lead--
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons recollect the Snow--
First-- Chill-- then Stupor-- then the letting go--
- Emily Dickinson.
I listened for at least a good minute or two, my hand on the bell of the stethoscope on her chest, simultaneously listening for heart and lung sounds, looking and feeling for the rise and fall of her chest. "Bell" - Pablo Neruda's frequent metaphor for "voice," or "life." Her eyes are partially open. The unnatural stillness of everything - breath, air, time - claustrophobic and weightless, all at once. I'm suddenly focused on the sensation of my feet on the wood of the floor, the force of gravity, the physics of the world I'm standing in juxtaposed against the unknown physical laws of wherever it is this person has gone, leaving only this carcass behind, an abandoned vehicle, keys still in the ignition. My eyes rise up from hers and look across her bed. I'm expecting to see one of the ER docs, a familiar face, to whom I can ask, "Call it?" But there's no one. Just an empty space, beyond which I can see through a window to the house next door, in which unseen people are probably making breakfast, hearing each other without listening in the busy-ness of morning. So much to do, and here, nothing.
Except to call it. I look at my watch. There's no one in the room to hear the time, or to see the number floating almost visibly in the air. Her hand is still warm...ish. Something about passing ships. Dark and unknown waters. Weightless and claustrophobic.
As I step back, her family enters the room. I can't figure out why they'd waited to follow me in. What else was so goddamn important...? They're young adults, some teenagers still. I realize with a jolt they probably didn't realize she was already gone when they'd called, they may have never seen a death before, or even a dead body - and am hit with a gutpunch of guilt.
They stop in the doorway. One of them swears she just took a breath, shouts that I'm wrong, she's alive, and runs to the bed, crying her name, lifting her head and torso into his arms. Holding. Begging. Sobs. I look to her chest in sheer terror for movement, her eyes for the faintest dilation of a pupil, terrified that oh my god I have just made the sickest and cruelest mistake of my life... maybe it had been a record-breaking apneic period? maybe her heart was just too weak to hear? maybe I'd been completely and horribly, tortuously wrong, and these poor young kids were going to hate me forever for being the most incompetent nurse in the world, for having to pronounce her death... twice...
She's gone! Oh, wait... Just kidding! Whoops! Oh, wait.... No, now she's gone. Wait...? Yup. Gone. Sorry 'bout that! *nervous laughter, rechecks her watch*
I'm not wrong. The sounds of grief quieting with bitter and final acceptance. And there are no monitors, no IV pumps to turn off. No gloves to remove, no white sheets. No curtains to pull, no carts to restock and move out of the room. Just this woman and her children, gathered on and near her bed, and Stevie Wonder's "Signed, Sealed, Delivered," washing, roaring suddenly into the room.
