By: Michelle White

       Three uniformed EMTs surround the bed moving in from the ambulance unloading bay. I can’t see the patient’s face, only pink zebra-striped pajama bottoms and a naked chest that undulates with each compression. I follow the bed into Exam Room 9 and pull the curtain shut.

       Nurses swarm the cluttered trauma room. Ida hooks the patient up to the monitor, and Kristy sticks EKG stickers onto the ribcage and connects the leads. Dawn is poised with a clipboard at the foot of the bed, watching the monitor to record vitals.

       The curtain swooshes, and Dr. Lultschik walks in. He stands on the side of the patient’s bed and presses his finger onto the woman’s thigh, feeling for a femoral pulse. All motion ceases and Dr. Lultschik gazes at the white wall. Then he pivots from the bed as quickly as he approached. Turning to the nurse performing CPR he says, “Come with me. Let Michelle take over compressions.”

       I walk over to the bedside and lace my fingers together, one hand on top of the other. I begin pumping on the patient’s chest, watching so that the numbers on the heart monitor stay at around 100 bpm. Ah, ah, ah, ah, stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive. It is the song I learned in CPR certification that summer to keep rhythm. The steady swooshing of the EMT’s bag pumping grounds me. With each pump the woman’s chest rises like an inflating balloon.

       I hesitate to take my focus off of the monitor, but look down at the patient anyway. My hand is thrusting downward in the middle of the woman’s fleshy wrinkled chest. My eyes wander up to her neck to where an endotracheal tube protrudes from her mouth. Her open eyes bulge, bloodshot veins flowing atop snowy white sclera into blue irises. Her dyed brown curly hair rests against the pillow, a butterfly clip sweeping her bangs off of her face. She looks to be in her mid-sixties. I overheard the EMTs telling the nurses on the way in that she collapsed at Conneaut Lake Park with her grandson there.

       The patient with the pink zebra-striped pajamas is dead. Dr. Lultschik will come back in soon to call time of death, and I will have performed CPR for the first time; yet all I can think about is how cold death feels under the heel of my hands.