I shakily write my signature releasing his body for autopsy and also for medical student dissection. He hands it to me as if it were a scalpel in the operating room careful not to touch my hand. Is he afraid that if he opens his heart and speaks his true emotions that he might say the wrong words and somehow incite a lawsuit because my lover has died on his shift? Or has he been taught by example that there is no room or time set aside in modern medicine for emotional connections? This time I don’t even feel any warmth in the non-ink pen. It lacks the sincerity and compassion even of the voice that had come out of the monitor. Without even a glance in my direction, he says, I’m sorry for your loss, as if prompted. His eyes are glued to a computer screen as he reads out loud. Her shift had likely ended with this chore signed out. He is not the same doctor who had me sign the first screen just thirty minutes before. The resident walks in with another non-ink pen and pulls up a screen titled consent for autopsy. She waits with me.Īfter a few minutes, my sleeve is wet. My heart finally breaks away from his and she is there to catch me. This is the first touch I have felt in weeks. She reaches out her hand and puts it on top of mine. I open my eyes and see that the nurse is standing there and has unplugged the machine. Did she also tell me that every five minutes, the refrain would repeat and get louder? The resident must have told me this, but I did not hear her explanation. First the heart stops, then the brain and finally the computer confirms that our life together is over. It is the amount of time that signifies irreversible brain death. Of course, that is the case because these words are coming from a machine programmed to speak when the heart monitor shows a flat-line for more than four minutes and is not turned off. I hear the same intonation, the same cadence and the same exact crispness to the words. I dream of the bright lights on the screen. I close my eyes somewhere between sleep and wakefulness and sense the regular rhythm of his heart. I watch the monitors, the same ones that have lulled me to sleep for the past few nights and days in the chair beside his bed. Am I going crazy or did the computer screen actually speak to me? The doctors and nurses have left me alone with him after turning off the drips keeping him alive. He is still alive, yet I feel as if I have already lost him. I am afraid to touch him because for weeks nobody else has touched him without donning gloves and mask and a plastic, disposable gown. I can sense the struggle without the monitor. Never mind that I know the strength of his heart from fifty-three years together living and growing, laughing and crying. The heart waveform is the one most closely scrutinized by the doctors and nurses as the true predictor of whether he will live or die. It is the same computer that is attached to him by plastic probes with invasive catheters entering and exiting his nose, mouth, penis and even stabbing directly through his skin into his heart. It is the same monitor that I have been studying for the past three weeks with its geometric curves and lines translated into numbers and sounds. They sound like they are coming from the bedside monitor as I sit next to his bed. I am surprised by the words, not even sure if I have actually heard them. The warm plastic tells me that this young doctor-in-training is indeed a live human being. She has been using it to check off the boxes over several screens before she hands it to me for my signature. The doctor never touches me, but I can feel her body heat transmitted through the plastic pen. If I dig deep, I can recall a few of the words that she has said to me in the last five minutes explaining that it is all about ending his suffering. It says something about stopping his ICU care and instituting comfort measures only. She is handing me a non-ink pen with which to sign the computer screen. A tall, female medical resident that I have never met before ends her monologue. The monotone sounds form into words that barely drag me from a subconscious, dreamlike place. Do you have a piece you’d like to share with the community? Send it to us here. This is part of the Medical Humanities Series on Op-Med, which showcases visual and literary art by our members. A Story & Conversation with Gary Fudem, MD Op-Med is a collection of original articles contributed by Doximity members.
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