50: Out, Damned Spot

                                    

                                          
Trigger warning: graphic descriptions of trauma medicine, descriptions of PTSD and a panic attack, graphic descriptions of violence
"Your voice, in the night
Sing me to sleep, soothe this insomnia
Haunted dreams, stages of grief
Repressed memories
Anger and bargaining
Your embrace, healing my wounds
Teach me to breathe, teach me to move"
-Til Death, Japanese Breakfast 
You were running, but it felt like the air around you was thicker than water, your limbs sluggish. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion, and the world was cast in shades of red and blue, flashing like ambulance sirens, like the glowing light of a code blue alarm. 
You could hear a cacophony of noises surrounding you like a symphony of chaos - vent alarms, call bells, tele monitor alarms, oxygen saturation alarms, IV pumps beeping, the wail of a far-off incoming ambulance. Over it all, you could hear a familiar scream you'd heard so many times before - the low, animalistic wailing of someone who has just been told their family member didn't make it. It echoed in your ears, ringing through your skull and making the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Your feet pounded the floors, running down that hallway that seemed endless. You didn't know where you were going or why, but you felt a sense of urgency that you had only ever felt in the emergency room, when someone's life was on the line. 
Every single curtained-off trauma bay was empty, and you couldn't see anyone around, just the shadows of the lights bathing everything blood red. There was a light on in the trauma room down the hall, and you went to it, watching your hand reach out and yank the curtain aside with a dry, screeching rattle.
The room was in chaos. Blood pooled on the ground, discarded wrappers on the floor, bloodstained sheets hanging off the stretcher, the tele monitor alarming asystole, all the remnants of a long and messy trauma that had ultimately not ended well. And the body on the stretcher, still and pale and covered in blood...
Katya's eyes were open and sightless, blue and glassy in the fluorescent lighting, and she was so pale, her skin waxy-looking and ghastly, and you let out a scream that echoed around the room, slightly distorted as if you were underwater. Your heart was slamming against your chest, and you couldn't breathe, your lungs feeling constricted. 
Your body moved before you could think, instincts taking over, and you were leaping up on top of the table, straddling her hips and screaming for help, staring at her as you pressed your folded hands to her sternum and began compressions. One, two, three...
You couldn't see any obvious injuries. You remembered having her laid out on your kitchen table thus, her blood soaking your hands, and you breathed raggedly, sobbing through your teeth as you counted compressions and felt her sternum bow under your hands, straining to the point of snapping.
You could feel it, feel her chest giving under your hands, the way so many patients' ribcages had over the years as you tried to massage their heart back to life with violence. Where was everyone? You needed meds, you needed an ambu bag, you needed a central line...
"Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three," you sobbed through clenched teeth, and you let out a long, low wail as you felt her ribs crack under your hands with a snap that reverberated up through your own bones, made you tremble, made your breath come quicker and quicker. You stopped, did a pulse check. Nothing.
"Can I get some help in here!" You screamed over your shoulder. Your voice echoed, distorted, and you began compressions again. 
No. God, no. Not Katya, please, please, please, God, not Katya...
You heard someone calling your name, and you let out a ragged wail, sobbing as you felt her ribs crack, and crack, and her blood was running over your hands, and her face was slack and expressionless and waxy-looking, that glazed-over, sunken-in look that corpses got, and the asystole alarm was still going, a long, low drone, and you were screaming her name, screaming, screaming...