| i was sitting in a room full of near strangers explaining how i tried as hard as i could but somehow she died on my service in pain and there was no way i could stop it. but i couldn't finish the story. i broke down and fled the room. i have cried in stairwells and hallways and this time in the little stip of garden between the clinic building and the condo complex next door.
when i got home, i ran and ran. i'm not going to even try to pretend i didn't get the idea from forest gump. i just ran and ran until her face could leave my head for a minute, until i didn't see her staring up at me with those big, scared eyes, grabbing my hand uncomfortably hard, sweating, flushed.
it didn't help that she was my favorite patient. i would go to sit at her bedside when i'd just about had it with everybody. she couldn't talk-- could barely move-- but she had kind eyes and made great company. a steady stream of friends came by, more than i've ever seen before or since. she was a professor of literature and i loved to use her professional title, same as mine.
over time, in my nightmares, she became less distraught. at least when i'm sleeping she slowly gets better, although the opposite was rapidly true in the waking world. being really sick makes you alone in your body in a way that no one else can really penetrate. i was alone with her, struggling to make sense of her speeding pulse, her rising blood pressure, her sweaty, flushed skin. i'd checked everything. then it hit me like a rock to the head-- pain. it's pain.
she couldn't speak, could barely move, but she could hurt.
and then i lost the battle for morphine.
dying cancer patients are a tricky bunch. the blow by blow account of this battle has played out in my head since the days before she died. let me bore you with a few of the choice particulars: 1) be unable to speak for yourself 2) be unable to push a button, like the one that calls the nurse or activates a morphine pump 3) have cancer all over your body 4) be in a hospital that equates "morphine pump" with "euthanasia" rather than with "pain control" 5) and pick the intern to help you, go ahead, squeeze her hand, stare up at her with your tortured eyes, surely she can do something.
run, run, run. |
