It's All So Fleeting

Very sad day in the ER. Listening to Sigur Ros right now only seems to compound the sadness and the reality. A 12-year-old girl was pronounced dead after a car accident involving her father, sibling and best friend. The others in the car were taken to another local ER, but this one...this one didn't make it.

About an hour after the 12-year-old arrived at the hospital, her mom came through the front doors to the front desk where I sit. She was almost hyperventilating. She had not been told yet that her daughter hadn't lived. Meanwhile, the social worker, who should have been johnny on the spot in the lobby to greet mom, made her wait almost 5 minutes before she came out to take her back and give her the news. That five minutes felt like an eternity for all of us - most of all the mother.

There she stood with a call for help in her face, uncertain of the outcome, her husband and other child in another ER in another part of town doing semi-okay. She kept looking over at me at the desk - me with my head down in my biology book trying not to make eye contact because then you know she'll ask you what you know about the accident. I have to play dumb. "I don't have that information, I'm sorry." "The social worker should be out here very soon." All the while, I feel helpless, my stomach weighted down with a huge pit of tragedy. I wanted to give her a Kleenex or a hug, or something. But, you can't when you're a volunteer. You just have to keep your head down and hope you don't make eye contact.

The social worker eventually came out to get mom. Took her back to a special area in that side of the trauma center. More family and friends arrived. An hour later, they all left with swollen eyes and mystified looks on their faces. It just wasn't true.

To bring the whole tragic experience full circle, the best friend was transported from the other ER to our ER with a ruptured spleen and broken leg. Her dad came rushing to the front desk trying to find her. His daughter was alive, but still, the look on his face was not unlike the mother's of the other girl who didn't make it. Through his face he said, "Is this really happening? How did my daughter live? What do I tell her?"

I pray for all of the families affected by this accident. I pray especially for the mother I saw today and for the father who was driving and lived. It's an unspeakable sadness.