Forgive and Remember

Last night two trauma victims came into the trauma bay in rapid succession. The EMS gave a quick report on the first one: a woman, sixty, pedestrian, hit by a car and thrown roughly fifty feet. Her right leg was snapped right below the knee, and her tibia was sticking through the skin. Her left leg felt like jelly. Her pelvis bone – which normally is solid as a rock – was a loose, broken mess. Her right shoulder had bad bruises on it, and there was a large amount of blood coming from the back of her head. We started to work on her. Her eyes were open, and she as moving, but that was it. We got IV access, and intubated her for her own airway protection. I drew some blood from a vain in her groin and handed it off to the lab tech to get us STAT labs. But…we couldn’t get a blood pressure.

At that point the second trauma came in. A male, twenty-five, with an obvious deformity of his right lower leg. The bone wasn’t sticking out, but it looked pretty bad. Other than that he seemed to be OK. He looked up and asked “how is my mom?”

We got him out of the trauma bay right then – he didn’t need to see or even hear what was coming next.

His mom didn’t have a pulse. CPR was started. In trauma patients, sometimes this is caused by something called a tension pneumothorax, which is a collapsed lung that is pushing against the heart, rendering it useless. We placed large needles in her chest followed by large chest tubes to decompress the chest cavity. Still no pulse. We put a huge IV in her neck vein and transfused her massive amounts of blood. We ultrasouded her abdomen – all negative. I took a scalpel and made a 3 cm incision below her umbilicus, and gently placed a catheter into her abdominal cavity, looking for blood or any other signs of where the trouble might be. Nothing. Her pupils became fixed and hugely dilated – her brain was literally herniating down into her spinal column. She was dead.

The placed looked like a war scene, with blood and gowns and gloves and needles everywhere. And when it all stopped – when the code was “called” – the room was silent, and everyone slinked away, defeated. And she just remained on the table, lifeless, and cold. But yet, after that last hour of hell, she finally looked at peace.

I’d almost forgotten what it was like to lose someone that quickly. What a horrible thing to say! I’d almost forgotten what it’s like to stop, take off my gloves, and stand there quietly, listening to my racing heart and panting breath as I stood over death. There is a prayer I always say in this situation:

Dear LORD, have mercy on us all who tried to help. And have mercy on your servant who passed away. Hasten your angels to this bedside, and usher her into your presence, that, if it may please you, she may this day be with you in paradise. Amen.

In this season of Lent, we hear so much about forgiveness. What I’ve learned recently is that forgiveness should not be confused with forgetting. Forgive and remember, I say. Remember the pain, the suffering, the neglect – but forgive. For it is only in that forgiveness that we might find peace.

I pray now for both forgiveness and that peace.