"Crushing pain. He is having radiating, crushing pain!"
"Who is he? What's his diagnosis?"
Get off me. I can't breathe. Anything, anyone...
"Call his primary team STAT. Get them up here."
Half-dimmed eyes, incessant quivering, a mask taut to his face--inspiration, expiration--muddled in ultimate exhaust.
"He is having a massive STEMI."
"Yes, yes we're here. He was diagnosed with Stage IV adenocarcinoma this morning. Poor prognosis. No family present. He was boarded for a drain placement. Cath Lab declined intervention d/t poor prognosis."
Make it stop, please. Help me, for the love of God, help me.
2 mg Morphine IV.
"Sir, I need to know what you want right now. We can put a tube down your airway which you may never wake back up from. Or we can make you comfortable."
Please help me. Make it stop. Make me comfortable.
"Sir, you realize that if we don't put this tube down your throat you will die?"
YES. Please, pleaaaaase.
2 mg Morphine IV.
Stillness rippled through the bodies in the room like a pervading epidemic with one last kick. No dyspnea, no flailing extremities, no indeterminate pleas.
Silence raged onward, for what seemed like, an eternity.
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