Under My Hands

Recent world events have my countrymen rejoicing, and although I certainly join them in support and well-wishes to those who have risked, and given, their lives, limbs and sanity to bring a terrorist to justice, I find it hard to feel the same excitement. A man is dead, and men and women died in making that happen. In retribution for the deaths of many, the maiming of many, years of war in a region plagued by war. More death, more injury, more pain. Some days, like today, I just wonder where it will end, if it will end. I have a weakness, I admit. As a clinician, I have a habit of seeing people as equal. I simply see them as bodies. All blood is red, all people experience pain, an amputee will have the same trouble learning to walk again whether that amputee is American, Pakistani or Afghan. The bones, the muscles, the nerves are the same. I know the body of my enemy as well as I know the body of my friend.

Today, as people rejoiced over the death of one man, I tried to bring comfort and strength to patients who are closer and closer to death. Everyday I think, it is my job to make sure it doesn't happen today. Not on my watch. It's humbling, and terrifying sometimes, to feel what I feel under my hands: skin and bones and sinew and stench and terror and hope and denial. I rejoice with a patient whose weight has climbed to 69 pounds, I rejoice with the patient who has shed 4 pounds and whose congestive heart failure has improved. I speak in comforting tones to a patient with metastatic cancer, and teach breathing, movement and relaxation/visualization techniques to lessen the pain. Between patient calls, I listen to news about celebrations surrounding this long-awaited death. A man is dead, and we are so happy. I find it hard to switch gears, to be happy about one death at the same time I am working so hard to prevent the death of another.

I don't kid myself about any redeeming factors of this man, I simply find it hard to celebrate his death, the same as I find it difficult to celebrate any death. As a woman, I would be a second-class citizen in the world he would create. As an outspoken and educated woman, I would be a threat, and the sword I wield in America as a hobby I would strap to my thigh under my burqa or chador for protection. I don't personally feel any safer because of this death, but then again, I wasn't really afraid to begin with. I felt more concern today on patient calls, in neighborhoods and on blocks where drive-by shootings occur. I don't want to get caught in the cross fire, should there be any. But I make the wisest choices I can, and continue to show up where I am needed.

Perhaps this death simply puts a period at the end of a sentence that has run on too long, and lets us move on. I will watch the celebrations from the sidelines like I usually do, writing, contemplating, processing, treating the injured should that be required. All blood is red, and there always seems to enough of it to keep medical personnel busy, no matter which side you are on.