In my job as a flight nurse, it's my duty to lift off and into disaster. But thankfully, it is rare that disaster happens constantly. So, you can imagine that each day is separated into periods that are before the tone and after the tone. Before the tone, there is laughter, we cook, we practice, we text our family and take naps. Before the tone, we peer review, we teach, we watch movies, we plan. Before the tone, we are friends hanging out together. Before the tones I have a spouse who needs me, a child who misses me, a sick family member. But after the tone, we aren't humans anymore.
After the tones we are heroes. After the tones our mistakes can kill our patient or ourselves, so perfection is the standard. After the tones we depend on more then 10 years of experience and training to make split second decisions. After the tones we step out of our own lives and into someone else's. I am not a husband or father here, my partner not a wife or mother. We have no bills, no ailing family members, no debt and no personal stress. After the tones, I don't feel human. A kind of switch is flipped. I have to go out on a call and perform at a higher level then anything else in my life. I have to see things that would bring me to tears any other time and pretend that it doesn't bother me. A terrified mother begs that she can fly with her child, afraid to leave her side. A 22 year old stares down at his legs that have fractured so badly they bounce on the gurney like a stuffed animal being carried by a 4 year old. The drowned, the drugged, the crushed, the failing heart, the burned alive; each horror begs for me to weep their lot. But I am not here to feel, or empathize, or be an emotional glue. Tragedy, when I am called, needs a solution, not a audience. I don't get to take in the problems, I fix them. I don't get to be nice, I have to do things that cause pain. I drill needles into bones and push needles into chests. I put broken things back in place and splint with hard and cold and confidant hands. I take down the dressing and look when you don't want to. If you say it hurts, I will touch it anyway. And as my patient yells out in pain, I pretend the blunt side of the needle doesn't sting.
I'll treat your pain, even let you sleep and breath for you if it is too much. In that opiate wonderland where no pain can find you, I bid you rest well and be not afraid. But what am I to do when I sleep? I have no wonderland, no corner to hide to. Instead of peace, my sleep is where I remember my patient. I remember the injury and treatment. I remember your eyes. I see the pain, the fear, the drug glazed grimace that told me to make sure things were ok. I remember your family holding each other, like back board straps for the soul they prop each other up to carry one another through this chrisis. I remember that I don't know what became of you. The training, the effort, the sweat that puddles in my boots after we fly home; there is no closure for us never knowing the ending to the story. I imagine that you woke up, or sat up, or maybe even stood up. I imagine you reaching up to hold your mothers hand like I promised you would. I imagine your family walking with you to the car, now ready to recover at home. But I fear that you don't wake up. What if I told you that it will be ok, and it's not. How many promises have I broken? I don't want to know. I only want to believe that the positive is bigger then the negative. I want to know that it's ok to be human when the job description is "superhuman". I wish I could promise you peace and calm and no pain or fear, the same that I wish it for myself each night sheding silent dry tears that have never known daylight. As day turns to night and back to day, as after the tone become before the tone again, it is never quite the same. No matter how easy I make it look, the blunt side of the needle always stings.