This is for Mayra...

Last Wednesday night I was at the UC Davis Medical Center Emergency Department, the only Level I pediatric trauma center in Northern California. I am there weekly to work as a research associate, assisting the physicians with their research projects and screening patients for clinical research.

One of the major perks of the position is that in my down time between patients, I get to talk to the physicians and observe trauma. As a hospital volunteer, I'm allowed (when there is space) to enter the resuscitation room and watch the doctors work on the trauma patients. Car accidents are popular. A few weeks ago someone was electrocuted (missed that one), basically, if you can severely injure yourself doing it, patients do it. It's an invaluable experience for me, as it shows me emergency medicine, raw and real. But peoples lives are on the line, and one mustn't forget that.

Wednesday night, I was in the ED at about 18:30 when the doctors in the pediatric resus room started buzzing. Traumas create a lot of action in the ED, and when one is one its way, blue plastic gowns and spit shields are donned . Then we wait. A seven year old automobile versus pedestrian was brought in, bleeding and broken. I can't give significant details, but she was very severely injured. She had been crushed and dragged 100 feet. I stood and watched the amazing team of physicians work on this child, as if she was their own. They were desperate, fully committed, they way you would want them to be if they were working on your child. I could only think, "How could this happen? Did the driver have a seizure? Was the child crossing illegally?" My view of the patient wasn't great. I stood in the back and heard orders shouted, discussion of her injures, and someone say "drunk driver." I reeled. I wanted to vomit. A foolish decision caused this child to suffer these injuries? Someone actually DID THIS to her? It wasn't some terrible accident? As the trauma care unfolded, so did the story. She was walking with her mom on the sidewalk when a drunk driver jumped the curb and hit them from behind. The girl's mother was thrown, Mayra was trapped under the car and dragged 100 feet before Steve Crismond's car finally hit a pole. Her body was trapped under one of the wheels of the car, and she wasn't even known to be a victim until bystanders trying to help her mother found her screaming, "My baby! My baby!" Her baby was under the car.

How does something like this happen? I don't know. As I stood in the ED Wednesday night, I prayed hard. I prayed for that little girl's life, I begged God not to take her, though I knew her life would be full of pain if she survived. Maybe it was a selfish prayer. I didn't want to stand there and watch her die. I wanted hope. I wanted my faith to be proven. "Please God. Not her. Not now." I prayed for the doctors and surgeons, "Give them strength, no matter what happens." I prayed for the child's mother, who was surely wishing she had been the one under the car instead of her baby. Mayra went to surgery, and I stood for a moment, watching the janitor come in with his mop. I watched the techs and the nurses clean equipment and prepare for the next horror to arrive. I went home not much later. I had decided that Mayra would be okay, but I knew her life was fragile.

Thursday morning, Gabriel Esquivel called to tell his wife that her baby died that morning after a night of surgery. I heard about it on the news and put my head in my hands and sobbed. Then, I did what I had to do. I wiped my face, pulled out my books and studied for my final exam.

Life isn't fair. It isn't convenient, nor easy.

Have you ever been in a car accident? I have, and the worst part is that deadening halt. There you are, going at some reasonable speed, suddenly, something stops you, and that force of being jerked out of your perceived reality (in your head you're still traveling down the road uneventfully) into this new reality of brokenness. Medicine can do that, too. Medicine throws a concrete wall in front of you while you're going 65mph down the 101 and jerks you out of your perceived reality. Suddenly, there is nothing left to do except clean up and move on.