I See You

The ICU is a horrible place, full of suffering. A place of weeping and gnashing of teeth. A place tainted by the stench of defeat and blessed far too infrequently with the perfume of triumph. It is a parasite that feeds on your soul. It grinds on you daily physically. It grinds on you daily emotionally. It grinds on you daily intellectually. If the ICU had its way, it would leave you as ashen and hollow as the bodies left by those that pass their final breathe there. It is a zombie, wantonly seeking brains only to leave a wake of pestilence and apathy.

As you can imagine, its can be quite an unpleasant dish. Especially when it’s served with sides of early mornings, call every third day, and only 4 days off out of 32. The piece de resistance, for me, is partaking in this smorgasbord of despair during Christmas.

While my wife, who is 716 miles away, opens gifts and plays Rock Band I get to gather a family and tell them we’re out of options. Their father is dying and there is nothing we can do to stop it. On Christmas day.

Today was an especially vigorous beating. The particularly beautiful sunrise left me optimistic that, despite having admitted seven new patients yesterday and discharged only one, Christmas day would be a day of celebration. I’ll spare you the details, but when I left this afternoon the overcast sky, sidewalk, and façade of the hospital were a pallid infinity of melancholy befitting of the events that unfolded in the interim of my arrival and departure.

My drive home was filled primarily with thoughts of Glenlivet and napping—an indifferent repose punctuated briefly by moments of terror related to esoteric diagnoses and outlier lab values that gradually submitted to rationalism. It was with this mindset that I crested the pass and saw, of all things, a rainbow. It was so cliché.

I’d like to tell you the rainbow engendered some epiphany and offered me the strength to carry on and fight the fight one more day. But it didn’t. It was just pretty to look at. The reality is I will fight the fight only because I’m forced to. It comes to me, and I either surrender or fight. That is the poignant reality of the ICU, which for me has become the allegory of life itself.