When I wavered on taking a job assignment in an ER in a small, military town in Texas, I had this big pull inside my gut coaxing me to go. There was a grander reason than needing to fund my daughter’s college fund or paying my electricity bill. I often get these intuitive nudges and I’m continually learning to just go with them and see what experiences they may bring.
Often, it’s a lesson for me to learn. Little did I know at the time that it was a message that only a small, brilliant soul could provide – a sweet spirit named Liberty. This precious patient was determined to give me my own emancipation.
My first few shifts had been pretty insane. Learning a new computer system in a new ER while patients are potentially dying can be a little overwhelming at first. To my utmost surprise, I was sure I had landed in OZ, on the good side. It was a magical land. The staff was so welcoming, helpful and salt-of-the-earth kind of people. My appreciation for Texans grew immensely. And the positive energy and attitude that permeated such a normally chaotic environment gave me a renewed faith that there were actual health care systems in our country that supported and cared for their staff and by doing so, ultimately their patients.
It was a foreign land to me, one I had not been privy to in many years. There were no suits and ties doing the bidding of a cowardly, fear-mongering Wizard by walking through the halls, attempting to squeeze the blood out of an understaffed, beaten-down group of health care providers who just wanted to save lives. Someone falsifying times to make some spray-tanned CEO’s metrics look as flawlessly ridiculous as his Rick Flare-inspired hair, so he could buy another yacht to impress and harass girls half his age did not appear to be a top priority in these ER halls – they must have been lined with yellow, golden bricks.
No, this place was surely a gem. There were plenty of doctors and nurses and techs and clerks and security guards and housekeepers, all working together happily and being appreciated for their skills. My body was in shock as this had not been the environment to which I had grown accustomed. It had been quite the ugly opposite. My soul had been screaming for a reprieve for a long while, and the Universe answered.
Taking the short, sunny walk from my car to the ambulance entrance to start my third shift, I silently said a quick prayer. It had become my little ritual of the awareness I was attempting to practice. I simply asked that I be a vehicle of healing in whatever form that may take; that God would work through me and guide me.
I also asked for protection; that I allow my own energy to facilitate healing but also to be shielded so that I may not take on the burdens of so many. It had been very clear to me recently that I had unconsciously allowed the suffering of others to manifest in my own psyche traumatically. As I was practicing presence and awareness, taught to me by the great writings of Eckhart Tolle, I glanced down at the pavement.
Pausing to look at the rock on the ground that had caught my eye, I smiled. There before me lay a rock shaped like a heart, all alone on the asphalt as if it was asking to be seen.
It reminded me of the pink rose quartz rock given to me by my best friend in honor of her mother, who should have died from a cardiac arrest but against all medical odds, instead had lived. I used to carry it in my pocket when someone was dying in the ER.
The nurses made fun of me because I would grab and rub my rock during a cardiac arrest or when I got a really bad feeling about a patient. Oddly enough, the patients would live when they should have died, or we would be running a code for hours because they just seemed to hang on entirely too long before transitioning.
I had a nurse once demand that I empty my pockets, because he was sure that I was hiding that rock and he was determined to drive his car over it. He was tired of relentlessly coding my elderly nursing home patient. In fact, Ernie was right. It was hiding in there. Once I removed it, my patient died peacefully. Call it coincidence if you like. I don’t believe in those anymore.
Remembering back to those times and that rock just as I finished my prayer, I looked up into the sky, felt the sunlight on my face and wondered what the day would bring, knowing I was where I needed to be and that I was safe.
Entering the ER, I got a beautiful, joyful welcome once again from the staff. Glancing over at the empty psychiatric room, I jokingly asked where on earth my morning psychotic patient was hiding. Each morning so far, I had started my shifts with a batshit crazy individual who was so far gone, it required force and tranquilizers to take them down. We were in the middle of laughing with the gratitude of not starting our morning that way when the EMS radio went off.
And then the laughter came to an instant halt as we all took in the frantic words over the broken radio transmission: “We are coming in with a seven-month-old cardiac arrest. CPR is in progress.” They were bringing in most ER providers’ worst nightmare. They were bringing us a dead baby.
Rushing to throw my bags down and prepare the room with my team before the imminent arrival, I briefly thought of dashing outside to grab that damn rock and rub it as hard as humanly possible, to keep that baby alive. No doctor ever wants to give the news that a loved one didn’t make it but especially not a child. My own heart already intuitively knew the outcome and it was not in my hands, no matter how hard I wanted to rub away the pain of death.
Almost instantly, the room was ready, each team member had an assignment, the drugs and devices of modern medicine were all laid out for a last-ditch effort to bring back the dead. Taking a deep breath and a pause, I looked into these new faces, fully believing that this child would be given the best care possible. It was our job. It was our gift. We were all healers in some form.
Just before the ambulance rolled through the doors of our resuscitation bay, I thanked them collectively for their help in what was going to be a difficult situation. I also informed them that I would probably work this child longer than I should but that I needed to be at peace that all efforts had been attempted, and so did they… and most importantly, so did the parents who I had not yet met.
As this little angel’s lifeless body was being wheeled into the room, I instantly knew her essence was no longer confined to a physical form. Her love and presence were now everywhere. She was free. She was liberated from any human suffering, just like the name on her hospital bracelet now indicated. My instinctive skills took over as we attempted her resuscitation methodically. Time passed and her heart never flickered again, despite all our technology, skills and training.
Approaching the chaplain who had now been rushed in to sit with the parents, I calmly explained that it was time to let her go. I wanted to give the parents, however, the opportunity to see what we were doing if they wished to, before I called her time of death. The look from “her holiness” made me think that I must have grown three heads.
“No, we don’t do this. This is not procedure. They can’t touch the body. They don’t need to see this!”, she exclaimed, trying to protect those parents from the inevitable pain. “Have you asked the staff if they are okay with this?”
Of course I had, but I gently led the chaplain into this child’s room, where staff had already placed two chairs for her parents to use, in case they fainted. Explaining to this woman of God that offering this brief moment might actually help in their grieving process, I asked the team again.
“Are you all okay with me allowing the parents in, if they want to be with their daughter in her final moments?”
A clear resounding “yes” and their nods gave that chaplain her own strength to gather us together as a team to pray for this little soul, for the parents who had given her life, and for the team now involved in trying to save it – to no avail.
After calling her time of death, thanking the team, and then watching her parents sorrow and searing unimaginable pain, I walked outside and took a moment for myself. Breathing the cool crisp Texas air, I gave thanks and gratitude for life and for death, and the beauty and the pain that can come from both.
Sitting with the agony of this experience and acknowledging it, for the first time in my career, seemed to free me from another unconscious scar in my psyche. Walking back, I passed that heart rock, picked it up and placed it in my pocket.
That heart rock would now serve me as a beautiful reminder of Liberty, the patient that had unchained me from my own emotional oppression. She had allowed me to sense my real emotions, acknowledge them, be present with them, accept them, and continue, as long as I draw breath on this New Earth.
