We went out of the room as the nurses came in to clean up the mess. As we passed through the hall, there were shocked, terror-stricken looks on all the other parents’ faces. Then we saw the mother. She was panicky and crazed. She wanted to run in and see the baby. We had to hold her back; we kept telling her that she shouldn’t go yet, that she should wait until everything had been cleaned up. She was screaming that she had to see the baby and we couldn’t keep her from her baby! But we told her again that she shouldn’t see her baby now, with all the needles and the mess.
Someone found a wheelchair and we got her into it; with a lot of effort, we pushed her into the house staff lounge. We got the father in and we got everyone else to leave, and we told the parents exactly what had happened. That’s when they began to cry. We told them we had done everything, everything possible, and that nothing had worked; there was never a response. They just couldn’t understand.
Then finally one of the medical students came in and said it was okay for them to come and see the baby. The mother darted out of the room and we followed behind her. We stood in the hallway and we called for the attending and we called for the priest and we called for the social worker. There were a lot of crying, hysterical relatives filling the hallway, filling the ward, and panic-stricken parents of the other children stood uncomfortably at the edge of the doorways, not knowing what to say or how to act. It seemed to go on forever.
The father didn’t stay in the room long; he couldn’t bring himself to look at the baby. The mother stayed. When she finally came out, we took her, and the father, back to the house-staff lounge and we sat and talked for a long time.
After a while I left the room. I had to try to finish my work so I could go home. It was hard to concentrate on my other patients, but somehow I did it. At some point, Jon came in and asked me if I would go back and sit with the parents while he and Eric went to attend to some other business. I went in. It was just the parents and me. They sat there, upset but now calm. They asked me, “What will happen to our baby now? Where will you put her?” I told them the baby would stay in the hospital until they had decided what they wanted to do. They asked me if I thought an autopsy should be done, and I said yes, I thought one should, so that we could find out exactly what had happened. But they shook their heads no.
A little later, Jon and Eric came back with the autopsy permission form. They urged the parents to consent to an autopsy; the parents said they would think it over.
Before I left for the day, I pulled Jon aside and began to cry. I couldn’t stop; I cried for the baby and for all the other children I’d seen die. I told him that I’d had other patients who had died and that I was beginning to feel like a death cloud. We went and talked and he reassured me it wasn’t my fault.
Then the family met with the priest and the social worker. Phone numbers were exchanged; I didn’t give them mine, but I thought that someone else had given them my number. Now I worry that I’ve lost touch with the parents forever. I wish I could be available to them.
When the family left, Jon, Eric and I were standing in the house-staff lounge. Eric cursed about how terrible this all was and then, in a very serious and angry tone, he said, “This job sucks!” We sat there silently, morose and upset. But then Eric began to imitate and make fun of some of the attendings in the most merciless way. And pretty soon, we were all laughing, and it felt so good to laugh because it had seemed like forever since I’d last done it. But as I was sitting there laughing, this terrible sadness came over me; I started feeling guilty for laughing at such a serious time. Then I began to sense a horrible, black feeling coming over me.
I left after that. The baby’s attending had never shown up. I was exhausted, so exhausted. It was a very bad night, a night during which I thought about quitting. And so I got up, and walked home.
I tried to call someone, just to talk about what had happened. All I kept getting was answering machines. So I tried to get drunk, but I could barely finish two beers because I was so tired. It’s been over twenty-four hours since it happened, but all day today I’ve been feeling depressed and upset. And I feel guilty as hell about it, even though I’ve been told over and over again that it wasn’t my fault.
Mike Miller had me over to his house. He told me over and over that the baby’s death was not my fault. We talked for hours. I really think Mike cares. He told me that the whole thing had happened under the eyes of the attending and that I was not to feel responsible for the baby’s death. And yet I do feel responsible. I feel terribly guilty and terribly sad. And I need to find some place for this inside of me so that it won’t eat me up, so that I can live with it. This was definitely the worst death of all deaths this year.