Things Fall Apart

Tonight, the ER became a very different place than what I had become accustomed to over the past three weeks. Reality broadsided me--Vince (my preceptor) and I were in one of the less acute areas, and I expected the evening to precede--well, not normally, because there is really no such thing as a normal day, but whatever I expected, I wasn't entirely ready for what we got.

The shift started poorly with what (in retrospect) seems like a bad omen: I poked myself with a needle for the very first time (don't worry, it was sterile and straight out of the package) and wound up with a Band-Aid on my left pointer finger. Makes things like putting on gloves and dressing IVs and washing your hands rather difficult, you know. Then, we simply seemed to get one patient after another with such difficult cases--intoxication, sexual assault, motor vehicle accident with casualties. More than once I found myself fighting back tears as I gazed upon shock, brokenness, grief, which seemed to seep from my patients.

And you find there is so little you can do. You can treat their physical issues, provide them with resources, but when it's all said and done, they walk out those front doors to--who knows what. I found myself praying a lot, asking that God would take everything we did and multiply it, that He would pick up where we left off in mending their bodies and minds and spirits. I am indescribably comforted that He hears and sees and knows them each by name.