again

It happened again.

I made a conscious decision not to get involved. I listened as my roommates and coworkers shared stories about their efforts to save his life, but I refused to allow myself to care. It's happened too many times before, and my heart is still too raw, the wounds from Greg's passing too fresh. I couldn't be a part of it.

And, of course, I failed to stay away. I poked my head into the ICU to find someone yesterday and saw them huddled over his bed, fumbling with a finnicky piece of equipment, a piece of equipment I know all too well from my time as a transport nurse back home. I stepped up to lend a hand and introduced myself to the slightly-confused anesthetist who, no doubt, was wondering who this random girl in sweatpants thought she was playing with the I-Stat. (And, in a surreal moment, when I told him my name, he grinned. I know who you are. I read your blog.)

Once the results were back, I stayed for a while, helping his nurse untangle wires and get him settled. I made the mistake of touching his tiny hand, and my heart dropped out of my chest. He was so small. Insubstantial. Hardly there at all, a feathery jumble of bones and skin, and I knew that I cared and I knew that I would hate that I cared.

He went to Jesus later in the evening. Quietly, too. Like Greg, he just stopped. And they let him. They took out the tubes and the wires, all the invasions making their marks on his little body, and they let him go. He was too small and he was too sick and he went back. Some of the children got to go back.

They prayed over his twin and over his parents and over their lives and they sent them off into the sticky night air. And they cleaned the bed and put everything in its place and sent the parts of the ventilator away to be re-sterilized. Because it's probably going to happen again. And again. And I don't want to care.

But I do.