They say you never forget your first.
I remember all of the codes I've been part of like they were yesterday, but the one that always comes back to me isn't my first, but my first really bad code. It creeps into all the quiet moments for awhile after I've been in or seen a recent code, like the little tendrils of a poison ivy plant trying to take a little more ground. It's flashbacks and snippets running through my mind whenever I let my brain go to idle for a good 48 hours after a more recent event.
Mr. M was disposable in society's view. He was a schizophrenic ex-war vet who self medicated with whatever poison he could find to stop the voices in his head and the bad memories of jungles and guns. He was homeless for a very long time before he ever crossed my path, non compliant with medications, and life in general. I had taken care of him multiple times for multiple reasons in the first two years I worked at this hospital. His cardiovascular system was no longer willing to put up with the abuse of a fast food diet, drugs, smoking, and drinking. He was estranged from his family and had been for years and like many of our patient's from his era never had a single visitor when he was inpatient. There were many reasons he could be dismissed, but I liked him. I tend to chatter while I work(whether my patient is able to talk or not) and make lots of bad jokes to fill the empty air. He sometimes chuckled at my jokes, he was always polite to me in an "I'm old enough to be your father way", and even though he sometimes gave me a hard time I could always convince him that he really did need to take his meds.
That day I wasn't taking care of Mr M, in fact his room was in an entirely different hallway of the hospital. He had finally had to come in and have one of his legs amputated because the blood vessels had finally called it quits. A couple months before this he had had a hip fracture and our social workers had found him a long term facility to live in (though he would tell anyone that he talked to that he would rather have been living under a bridge in subzero temperatures), and so fortunately someone had noticed before it took more. I actually only walked down that hall on a fluke, looking for an elusive hand mirror for one of my patients because he wanted to see the wound on his foot and due to size he was unable to. As I got halfway down the hall my brain's defense system kicked in and tried to make sense of what was right in front of me. I say a foot and part of a calf protruding from Mr M's doorway and thought "That's weird, why would Mr M be on the floor"(the brain does try to protect us) and as I took 2 more steps towards the room and a large puddle of blood came into view time slowed as though everything was encased in thick honey. What only took 5 seconds in reality seemed in my mind to go on for an hour. I remember vividly to this day the color of the blood, the dark crimson arc of the pool of it extending across his hospital room away from where he was lying. I remember yelling my friend and fellow nurse's name because I knew he was working in that hall. I remember having to try to step around the pool and Mr M to hit the code button, because my mind was still protecting me and telling me that I didn't want that on my shoes because I would leave foot prints. I remember a passing Plastic Surgeon who was just there to see another patient running in to help us. Mostly I remember kneeling in that pool of blood and pressing on his chest over and over again and the way the blood felt as it soaked through my scrub pants and onto my knees (see why trying so hard to not step in it was so ridiculous) in my mind it was what a fly would feel when he landed on the flypaper. And all the while counting in my head, just like we are taught over and over again, year after year. Just like I had done many times before to patients after their heart rate had flashed 0 on the screen over their beds. But this was different, I had stopped that morning to say "Hi" and had even helped his nurse get him onto a Cardiac chair (a reclining chair with wheels) so he could go down to physical therapy. It was at least 4 hours since then. That chair was still in the room, it was just over my left should in fact. His nurse had been to busy to get him back to bed and so had left him in it and gone about whatever she thought was more important. She hadn't given him his call light, his urinal, or anything. She had just pushed him into the room walked away.
There's no way to know how the series of events happened. He was stubborn and never wanted anyone to help him with anything. He had a broken hip and had just had his lower leg removed, but I know he still would have been defiant and independent. So as the nurse who should have gotten him back to bed was down the hall at the nurse's station online shopping(that part is fact, I had passed her on my way down the hall to look for the mirror and had asked her a question), he probably decided he needed something. The remote, the urinal, to get back to bed and decided to do it himself. However it happened this is where we ended up, me kneeling next to him counting quietly and him staring blankly at the ceiling.
We never should have been there. I shouldn't have this memory. I shouldn't remember how heavy his body was when we all had to lift him onto the bed when the doctor told us we were done. I shouldn't be able to remember the way the white body bag's zipper sounded when we closed it. I shouldn't remember how used and scratched the stainless steel table was that I wheeled him down to morgue on was.
But I do, and I always will.
