Writings: Haunted

I am desperate for morning to come, to hear the distant early bird's song, to have this bedroom filled with living, breathing light. But in the night there is only darkness and my equally dark thoughts - I become frightened that my mind might evoke the spirits that haunt my subconscious. Because in the darkness the boundaries between conscious and subconscious, life and death begin to blur; I begin to think of him, when we used to play as small children, and I can only remember happiness. Now he is dead, and my human brain cannot makes sense of it because I am still here, so why is he not? Things, including people, just don't disappear into nothing, we learned that in science class...will he come back tonight to prove that he has not gone away? I am sad because his passing was senseless, and now so many people will be lost without him. What privilege do I have to stay when he may have deserved it more? I turn on the light and try to sleep with my eyes open, desperately waiting for morning.

* * *

These restless nights happen to me often, as I am now in the business of shepherding the ill to their death. I recently came across an admission note I wrote for a patient, and I could not bring myself to throw it in the shredder like I should have. For some reason it felt like I would forget him if I threw away the papers, and since he died during that admission if felt like I was throwing away his existence. I did not want to associate his death with the paper shredder ridding the world of the obsolete.

He was a young man, who came in with the emaciated look of someone terribly ill. He had a young, devoted wife who stayed by his side and looked at him with such a tender, bewildered concern that it still hurts me to remember it. We did not expect him to die because he was such a young man; because we did not know for sure what was wrong with him; because we did not want him to die. The only person who expected it was the pulmonary fellow, who yelled at us for consulting him for a dead man walking. When we asked him again what we could do, he attacked my resident with such meanness she began to cry, which made me cry because we were just trying to do good. He told us the compassionate thing to do was to save a dead man from an unnecessary workup, but we knew he just wanted to have one less patient on his consult service. We did not give up.

The young man died so suddenly, without warning, that he was in a normal floor room when it happened. I will never forget his death, the way he lay unnaturally bent on his bed with eyes and mouth half-opened, completely and terribly still. His pretty wife was in shock: her face like stone, her gaze fixated on the air, averted in the direction away from her dead husband. She did not move to wipe away the rivulets of tears that dripped madly off both cheeks. We were all speechless with horror. Only the attending could say something because it is his business to do so. He expressed our sympathy and offered the family an autopsy should they want one. The father could only shake his head no, his voice choked by the tears probably brought on by the thought of the scalpel on his son's cold skin. When we left the room, the resident sobbed. I cried too, silently, looking at my computer screen trying my best to find a distraction. I am a professional after all, and the best thing to do is to not think about it.

* * *

But at night, there is nothing but a terrible stillness and a sense of vulnerability. In the darkness, memories come back to haunt me, and I am frightened. Not because I fear evil spirits, but because I am the evil one; because in the senseless struggle of survival I have managed to buy myself more time, while helplessly watching those around me fall. If there is a God, I think there would be a punishment for this injustice.