Bearing witness.

I enter my patient’s room and hear the sucking click as the door slides shut behind me. Vacuumed silence, negative pressure—but all the pressure in the world seems to settle onto my shoulders, my head, and down through my back, filling my feet like wet cement.

I need to move. His oxygen saturation is dropping again. He’s grimacing. Is he in pain? I wonder as I step closer to the bed. My pulse quickens as I take in the scene before me: glassy eyes inset upon a sunken, sallow complexion; bleeding mouth; the imperceptible rise and fall of chest to the biddings of the ventilator; swollen limbs. A lock of hair falls into my eyes, but my PAPR hood prevents me from pushing it aside. His heart rate and respiratory rate are higher now. Maybe he needs more sedation. If only he could speak. I take in a measured breath of filtered air as I suction his breathing tube. Breathe.

The doctor appears and is talking to me, but her voice is barely audible above the steady stream of air rushing past my ears. We’re practically shouting. The plan, a combination of trial and error, science, and visceral, pit-of-the-stomach intuition, is shaky at best.

As she moves away toward the door, I want to call out to her, to beg her to stay, to look upon the suffering and feel its weight, but I am silent and she disappears into a sea of blue scrubs. I am alone in this sealed room […]