![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
R had an appointment at the hospital today, for an ultrasound to check for gallstones. Neither of us expect the test to come back positive, mind, but to appease the doctors who want to rule out everything else before yet another diagnosis of IBS is made, he went to the appointment anyway. I sat in the waiting room while he was in for the test, sitting in a less-than-comfortable chair, reading a book to pass the time.
Not long after he'd gone in for the test, an announcement came over the intercom. "Code Blue! Code Blue! Diagnostic Imaging!" A nurse ran past me down the hallway, followed by two more people wheeling a crash cart between them.
Somebody had gone into cardiac arrest not 100 feet from where I was sitting.
It was a tense moment. One of the people in the waiting room with me asked a passing orderly if Code Blue was a bad thing, and she looked over and said it certainly wasn't good. I explained to him that I believed it was cardiac arrest, and the orderly confirmed that. The man seemed proud that I'd gotten the right answer, as though it was some sort of test, and all I cared about was sitting there and not being able to do a thing to help somebody who was so close by.
Not that I could have done anything, not compared to the doctors and nurses who were already there trying to revive the person. But I felt so helpless, and once again wished that I'd paid more attention in high school and acheived my goal of going into medical school.
I'm not emotionally equipped for it, I know now. I wouldn't be able to take the hectic pace of school and life thereafter. But I still wished that I could have done something.
My life's goals now aren't nearly so grand. I want to make enough money to live comfortably, doing what I love. It won't be glamourous. I'll probably never save a life. I'll probably never make any great discoveries. I'll probably never be thanked by anyone for doing important things. But I don't need that to be happy, and I'm glad I've come to grips with that, selfish though it may be.
I hope that person's okay.
Not long after he'd gone in for the test, an announcement came over the intercom. "Code Blue! Code Blue! Diagnostic Imaging!" A nurse ran past me down the hallway, followed by two more people wheeling a crash cart between them.
Somebody had gone into cardiac arrest not 100 feet from where I was sitting.
It was a tense moment. One of the people in the waiting room with me asked a passing orderly if Code Blue was a bad thing, and she looked over and said it certainly wasn't good. I explained to him that I believed it was cardiac arrest, and the orderly confirmed that. The man seemed proud that I'd gotten the right answer, as though it was some sort of test, and all I cared about was sitting there and not being able to do a thing to help somebody who was so close by.
Not that I could have done anything, not compared to the doctors and nurses who were already there trying to revive the person. But I felt so helpless, and once again wished that I'd paid more attention in high school and acheived my goal of going into medical school.
I'm not emotionally equipped for it, I know now. I wouldn't be able to take the hectic pace of school and life thereafter. But I still wished that I could have done something.
My life's goals now aren't nearly so grand. I want to make enough money to live comfortably, doing what I love. It won't be glamourous. I'll probably never save a life. I'll probably never make any great discoveries. I'll probably never be thanked by anyone for doing important things. But I don't need that to be happy, and I'm glad I've come to grips with that, selfish though it may be.
I hope that person's okay.
