When you learn how to say goodbye to someone you never knew.

            Take deep breaths in the hallways. I came across a quote by Morgan Harper Nicholes that started out with this line. It wasn’t geared towards nursing but me in the midst of my night shift daze saw it as a sign. The word ‘hallway’ will forever transport me to the hospital, to rolling heavy hospital beds with critical patients down to CT at 3AM, to power walking up to the blood bank to pick up yet another unit of blood, and to those frazzled moments after coding your patient for what seems like hours when you just have to escape your unit for 5 minutes. And you rest your back against the cool white walls knowing these hallways won’t tell anyone about this 5 minute breakdown.  They’re the best secret keeper and oh the things they have seen. Those moments are my least favorite thing. All the feelings come a rushing in, feelings that where easy to push back when you had lines to prime and meds to push; maybe it’s the adrenaline that kicks in. But what I want to talk about is what happens after. After the patient stabilizes, or, doesn’t. After you clock out and walk your throbbing ankles and messy hair to your car, stomach growling, and have to sit with the trauma of the day you have just experienced. For me it manifests itself in different ways. I remember my first code. It wasn’t my patient but being a new and enthusiastic nurse I rushed to the room and when a grumpy attending yelled that he only needed one person doing CPR and every extra person out of the room, I quickly volunteered. There wasn’t much we could do he was a 90+ years old and riddled with cancer. When they called it I stayed behind to ask a few questions about the code blue process. I took notes on what needed to be done and what went smoothly to better handle myself when I had to deal with my own code blue. After the shift I felt energized and went to a workout class. In the middle of the class something opened. The code came flooding back into my mind uninvited, my chest swelled with emotions as I realized one pivotal thing. I didn’t know his name. This man who I had watched die. Whose chest I had compressed, whose ribs I had felt break. He had no name. And now he was gone forever. He had lived his whole life and suffered and died and I had given him nothing in the end, had ushered up no prayer for his spirit or for his family or thought to say goodbye. Now a days it hits me while I drive home, especially after a hard shift, and I welcome the emotions and I have learned to say goodbye. I grieve for the patients I lost or the ones that are suffering. I pray for them all by name. I will them to be well. To go with dignity when their time comes. Being happy is a wonderful thing but, at least for me, I’ve found it’s not always a realistic state of being. I would rather be genuine, sincerely acknowledging the feelings that are rushing through my heart than to strive for some shallow sense of constant positivity. In my job in the ICU I am surround by pain and loss and fear. I stand with patients as they pass from this life. I could shrug it off but instead I have learned to give space to it, to listen to my heart that is so sad even when it doesn’t make sense to be. I have learned to “take deep breaths in the hallways” and honor the humanity of a person even in death, even by name.