..I Watched the Dead Man's Beating Heart..

“..the first sorrowful mystery..”

I can’t even continue my prayer.

I felt the pang of anguish encircling every muscle of my beating heart. The warmth of that tiny drops trickling incessantly from the corner of my eyes I don’t know if the back of my palm is enough refuge to calm my sobs. The sobs you don’t like to hear yourself it’s been a long while I’m moved to my core.

I am acquainted preparing a critical patient. The adrenaline rush to resuscitate them when they are at the point of crashing and the sigh of relief when you feel the regaining pulse. 

But that night, it was a different preparation.
I was preparing for the experience I will hailed most remarkable being an ICU nurse.
I moved out of the ICU twice as I impatiently waited for time. I breathed the sullen evening air as the cold wind sways in melancholy the flowers in the mini garden of the hospital. Looking at the starless sky, the impending drizzle I suspect will fall anytime, it seemed to be conniving with the restlessness I feel inside. 

Imagining his goodbye to his wife, to his kids, did he ever imagine the possibility that it could be the last? That day when he spoke to them, or his friends, did it occur to him that it will just be all but  a memory?

In school, tests come after the lessons. But in real deal of life, lessons come after the tests. 

I went back to ICU. The clock seemed to be ticking very slow while I am seated not far from the cacophony of monitor’s alarms while my legs are slightly elevated, impatiently wishing for time to further its pace. In night’s oblivion, I have to self-introspect my own deity. 

I thought I was brave enough.
But sometimes, I’m good at make-believe.

We pushed him to OR, my steps heavy as my heart. I’m used to pushing patients to be operated to survive. But that night... There’s something different about that night.

I changed to my scrubs and wore the gloves snugly on my cold sweating hands. 

There he was on the table. Surrounded by the team whose main goal is to save a life. 

The room was then filled with smell of human flesh and bones seared so as the team can see his heart. I glanced at the clock calculating time. T I M E. 

There's no turning back. Of that single heart beat.

 It was wrenching. It was awful. 

Life’s brevity and all.

How we are connected from one another remains to be a grand mystery to me. Watching his heart beating on his open chest, I’m dragged into that abyss, a point of asking how losing one’s life becomes a hope for someone else. That if God is there, watching, why should his children and his wife will be fatherless and husband-less tonight?

“I’m ligating now the aorta”, my fear coming to close.

I watched his tracing fibrillating.

If this is just in a different circumstance, if only, I could have compressed his heart...

The heart of a husband.

 A father.
A brother. 

A friend. 

A person who just dream what’s best for his family...

And when the anesthesiologist called in “flat”, I knew that the night was long. 

And I was part of that night.

I will remember the sacrificial love of someone to the end.

I will remember how one's loss is another person's gain.

I will remember how our life is akin to a thread, it can snap anytime.

I will remember how temporary this body is, and how fleeting moments are.

I will remember that there's no greater love than the love of the Father to His Son.

Sometimes, I don’t know if I’m lucky that compassion is one of my strengths.
Because more often, it has become my nemesis.

When I take off my scrubs that day, physically and emotionally spent, I was cajoled to run my fingers to the tiny beads of my rosary. Offering my prayers of sorrowful mystery, I can only guess that I am made for this...

..a wounded healer watching the dead man's beating heart.

How do you live for that single heart beat?