She was 81. She couldn't breathe.... congestive heart failure. Lungs full of fluid, sweating, gasping for breath, panicking but fighting to keep her dignity, fully alert to her situation.
I gave her Oxygen... thinking, "Shit... why can't she pass out or at least get tired enough for me to intubate her?"
I talked to her while I worked furiously in the back of the ambulance. I started the IV. I gave her the maximum amount of Morphine and Lasix we could give. I told her I wanted to put a tube down her throat and into her lungs to help her breathe.
She begged me to let her die. Over and over again...
She wouldn't let me tube her, too restless even after the Morphine, but I got her to the hospital alive.
We wheeled her into the ER room we were assigned and no one came. I could hear the nurses all gathered around the nurses station, laughing, joking, talking. No one came. Not a doctor. No one. I couldn't figure out why they weren't coming. We were the only ones... it wasn't even busy that night.
She was dying and the more we waited, the more pissed I became. I yelled, exasperated, to the nurses station, "Can we get a little HELP here, please?" And as the nurse casually sauntered over, I thought, "You fucking bitch. Could you be more uncaring?" I told her, "I want you to find a doctor, NOW!" and she left for several minutes.
The little lady was fighting to breathe yet ripping the Oxygen mask away from her face, believing it was suffocating her. She was drowning in her own fluid as I stayed beside her, holding her up and forcing the Oxygen into her lungs. But then she reached across the bed railing and gently put her arms around my neck, tired from fighting, and hung on to me as if I were the only thing between life and death. I held her as she was dying, and it was the only time I've ever cried, silent but openly, while still on a call.
I couldn't be silent any longer, but didn't want her to die alone. I peeled myself away and told my partner to stay with her.
I went into the bathroom and sobbed.
And then there were more calls to run.
She had died, hours later, in CCU, I had heard.
I still think of her. Often.