tales from the front line
the obit said you died peacefully at the hospital … a fucking lie … a real fucking LIE … and i should know - i watched you die. it haunts me still, your death. Filled with pieces of undigested food, mixed with old blood, vomit, bile, and scented with shit - i recall it as most violent, certainly not peaceful.
v-i-o-l-e-n-t. that’s how i categorize this story in my head. no weapons of any kind. no alteractions. no gunshot. no stabbing. merely violent death by cancer. what else do you call it when the paramedic is ‘bagging’ the patient (i.e. using a bag-valve-mask to artificially respirate the patient) and coffee ground, bloody and shit-scented vomit shoots out of the one-way valve? we were trying to breath for you and all we ended up doing is ‘pumping’ the fluid out of your lungs. you died before we could ever displace all that bloody, shit-vomit from your lungs with good ole oxygen.
you died with no loved ones around. no one to hold your hand. alone. is that how you envision it? with two nurses and two paramedics farting into thunder, trying save your life. the whole thing - undignified. grotesque. desperate.
the doctor, comfortably sleeping in his small town bed when i called to inform him of your sudden demise, snorted at the thought of leaving his nice warm bed to carry out his duty to his patient. and all he could say, when he did finally arrive to sign the death certificate, etc. etc., is stupidly remark how i should have taken my gloves off before entering the nursing station …
i recall the thick, sickly thud of the vomit hitting the tv cabinet beside the bed as it rapidly shot out of the one-way valve. i recall the gutteral wretching sound, orginating from the depths of your gut, and the force of the projectile vomit as it shot out of your mouth like a high-powered missile. i recall the frantic desperation that descended on all of us in the room as we saw you slip toward death.
i recall the lightening speed with which we erased all traces of the truth from the room - the tell tale linen, the resuscitation equipment, the splattering on the cabinet, floor and you, yourself. it haunts me. haunt. haunt. i did not know you. but i cried for you, we cried for you. did you hear us?
