Lessons in kindness
Many moons ago, after I had graduated college but had yet to find that career job that was supposed to magically appear as soon as the diploma hit my hand, I took a job as a pharmacy technician at Middle Tennessee Medical Center. I had worked my way through college as the lead certified pharmacy tech at CVS, but the hospital job would pay more and, honestly, seemed more interesting than the retail side I had seen day in and day out for six long years. It also had a large non-clinical side that I hoped would one day lead me to something more in my field (which, thankfully, it did.)
The open pharmacy position was for second shift, which was perfect because at the time I was also working part-time as a Spanish translator for the Rutherford County Health Department a few mornings a week. When I eventually left the translator job, second shift became more perfect, as it fed my night-owl tendencies until I swore I could turn my head 270 degrees if I tried hard enough.
Working on the clinical side of a hospital was a strange, alternate reality. As a pharmacy tech I had limited patient contact, and the closest I usually got to entering a patient’s room was when I had to bring an extra crash cart to the unit when a code had been called.
The pharmacy was responsible for maintaining the medication on all of the crash carts placed strategically around the hospital. We would make sure the ones on the floor had in-date drugs and supplies, as we did with the extra carts we kept in the pharmacy. When a code blue was called (all of the other emergency situations were called phases, as in “phase gray” for a tornado, but when someone was in respiratory or cardiac arrest, the PBX operator would call “code blue”), one or two pharmacy techs would grab an extra cart and tear ass down the hall to get to the code location as quickly as possible. It was rare, but sometimes the situation would be so intense that the nurses and doctors would run through all of the life-saving medication on the cart they had in their area that they would require another immediately. We would return later to retrieve the used cart and restock it.
Working second shift, I saw a lot of codes called in the ER, but the doors of the room were usually closed so I would just leave the extra cart, knowing I would be back later to pick up the emptied one.
The first time I had to respond to a code called in the ICU by myself, I was not prepared mentally. I didn’t really anticipate having to be. It was probably close to 10 p.m. when the code was called, and the other second shift tech was busy with an IV so I responded alone. When the operator called a code, she would also call the unit and the room number of the patient. I can’t tell you the room number today, but I can tell you that when I burst through the ICU doors with the replacement cart, the room was the second one on the right, right in front of me. The door was open.
Six or seven nurses flanked the bed, shouting orders and yelling back responses. They tossed instruments and medications across the patient to one another in perfectly timed choreography. One of them was pumping the man’s chest in compressions that I felt all the way out in the hallway.
I left the new cart in the hall by the room’s window, turned around slowly and then walked briskly out of the ICU. As I waited for the elevator, I could feel my heart thumping in my head. I put my hand on my chest and counted each beat. When the elevator opened, I sighed in relief at its emptiness. I stumbled in, pushed 3, and leaned against the guardrail for support.
And then I cried like a god damned baby.
I cried for the man in the ICU, completely dependent on the help of strangers. I cried for the staff in there helping him furiously to stay alive, trying so hard not to fail. But mainly I cried at the kindness I had just witnessed.
I have replayed the scene over and over again in my head, taking out of the picture the hospital bed, the crash cart, the room, the unit, the hospital, until all I saw was a group of strangers huddled around someone they met barely hours ago, doing everything they collectively were capable of to save a life they hardly knew existed.
I learned a lot working at MTMC. But what sticks with me most is the amount of courage and kindness I witnessed on an almost daily basis. And even today, nearly five years since that day, I get overwhelmed.
