Time Of Death - Fiction. I've Been Watching Scrubs Again.

The first death on your watch isn’t even your fault. You’re just one of the many interns who rush to the bedside when the code is called, peering at the doctors crowding around. As the patient gasps and chokes, you too gasp and choke as each electric shock blasts through the body. The doctors are grim-faced but determined; you hopelessly wonder why they even bother. Again and again the voltage is cranked up, but thunderbolts can only do so much.

The doctor holding the paddles slowly turns away from the flaccid flesh and another quietly asks, “Time of death?” You back away, feeling as if the defibrillator was really meant for you as your heart pounds out its own furious pace. A devastated mother takes your wrist. “Time of death?” she whispers, mis­taking you for a doctor, someone who tried his best to resuscitate her darling daughter, someone who knew what he was doing, someone with guts enough to challenge death. Not a first-year intern who never could remember which number was the systolic for blood pressure, not someone who didn’t even dare to take blood sugar levels.

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” you blurt. “You’ll be able to talk to the doctors inside…” you mumble, patting the trembling hand. She bites her lip and nods, letting go of the scrubs that you shouldn’t be wearing, the scrubs reserved for those who can save lives, not for those who don’t even know how to gently break death to a loved one.

The third death is similar, only this time you’ve been dragged along for scut work. You’re the one ramming your hands into the sternum, trying to force the fluttering heartbeat into your rhythm. You’re the one leaping out of the way of the defib paddles, jumping back to start compressions again. The patient bottoms out, but after the paddles thunder a third time, you can feel the thump of the heart, tangoing with yours as you collapse against a chair, arms quivering with strain. You shudder with relief. You brought him back. You saved him. You.

The eighteen death is the hardest. That little baby in neo-natal care should never have been forced to live on machines. Each breath is a struggle, and the medications are flowing in a poisonous concentration for such a small body, yet the parents insist on continuing the farce of life. They’re unwilling to bear any grief while their baby boy wheezes and thrashes weakly, seeking comfort but receiving only the hard embrace of a hospital cradle and the groan of machines.

The mother shrieks, “He’s blue! Do something!” After you reach the crib and despair at the readouts, you motion the code team away and beckon to the mother and father.

“The best thing for him is to take him off the machines,” you say.

The dad glares. “You want to kill him.”

They don’t understand the torture they have put him through. “If he even survives a year, he will be severely physically and mentally disabled. For life,” I persist.

The mother moans, “He’s blue! I don’t care. Just save him! Now!”

You nod at the code team, maneuvering yourselves around the tiny crib and pulling off the oxygen mask, trying to fit your large palms against the flimsy baby with his face scrunched up in a silent wail. The heart drugs aren’t having any effect due to the amount of medication already flowing through his body.

“Use the shocker!” the mother wails.

“We can’t!” you snarl, trying to give compressions to a weak chest and an even weaker malformed heart. “Your baby is too small and his heart is deformed! If we do, we’ll kill him!”

The code leader shakes his head. “Time of death ….”

“No!”

“3:36 p.m.”

The thirty-third death is the best death. You’re the one in charge. If a code is called, you will wield the paddles, call out “Clear!” You have the final say on time of death if it occurs. You won’t let those words pass your lips.

But she smiles at you through her pure white hair. “I’m ready to leave. Are you ready to let me go?”

You sob, throw down the clipboard. “No, Mum! I don’t want you to.”

She still wears the tender smile of years past as her body wastes away and shrivels to a mere fraction of her vitality. “But it’s necessary. I need you to. And you know it.”

“Mum ….”

And she brushes her hand against yours, squeezing it once before closing her eyes. “You’re ready.”

You kiss her cooling cheek then note: “Time of death: 9:12 a.m., Thursday, April 24 ….”

Shitty Mascara - Short American Style Fiction (Lot's of research on the Americanisms)

I wipe at my stupid eyes with the back of my hand, and it startles me for a second that my tears are gray. I dunno why it surprised me; I mean, I buy the s***ty mascara that’s $1.99 in the 20 Items or Less checkout lane. Why spend oodles of green on something I hardly ever use?

I just wanted to look nice, you know? Like those girls who’re just naturally fake pretty. The girls who can blend shades of eyeshadow like no one’s business, and match their lipstick to the exact color of their toenail polish or whatever. Seemingly effortless, yet impeccably coordinated.

This is good stuff, I should write for a living – solely on the subject of beauty queens with superiority complexes, of course.

I just want … God, what do I want? I want to feel the sun on my face and paint the clouds and hear the music in the trees and love myself and love someone else and just feel perpetually beautiful.

But that requires the $14.99 waterproof, fire-retardant, Grade-5-hurricane-resistant mascara, not the tube that’s two bucks in Lane 4.

My shoes are dirty and outdated, but that’s how I like them. I like these shoes. They’re comfortable. Why do I need new, expensive, fashionably appealing shoes in order for someone to say, “Hey dogg, you look nice today”?

And why is it that whenever I get deathly bored and slather cheap, pore-clogging makeup all over my face everyone suddenly says, “Wow, you look pretty!”? Since when is “pretty” about whale blubber and cocoa butter?

I’ll tell you one thing, though. I most definitely am not crying about some stupid XY.

Definitely not.

I’m crying for all the whales that have to give up their fatty insulation so that some fugly anorexic super bitch can paint herself pretty every freaking day, giving him something halfway decent to oggle all the time.

Seriously, I’m not leaking saltwater over a guy.

I just think it’s cruel and unfair that the fat-endowed marine life population doesn’t even get the slightest warning that they’ll soon be on a cosmetics endcap at K-Mart.

He could have at least broken it to me gently, you know? We’ve been friends since the George Bush/Al Gore debacle.

I mean come the Bette Midler on.

I spill my blood, guts, and viscera out to this guy and he throws down the “Let’s just be friends” card without a second thought?

It’s just … it’s common courtesy to ease someone into heartbreak, not smash it over their head like a whiffleball bat.

You know what? I’m going to take my $1.99 checkout Lane 4 mascara and chuck it right at her big, stupid square head.

I lost a friend once.

When she smiles she cries,
She's sad and lonely.
When you ask for her name,
She says "Nobody knows me".
I reach out to her,
I write her a poem.
It doesn't work,
She just looks fearsome.
I hold her hand,
I cry with her.
For her, over her and after she's gone.
She's leaving she says,
To where she belongs.
It's too late to see,
If she'll miss me.
She's gone,
I cry.
She's gone,
She died.
I should of looked deeper,
Into her eyes.