What's Under the Cape

I know you've seen it by now.  The pic snapped by an EMS driver of an ER physician hanging onto a wall while trying to compose himself after loosing a 19 year old patient... It's struck a nerve across the country, but why?  I know that when I saw it, I instantly teared up.  I felt his pain.  I, too have at times slumped to the floor too overwhelmed to even stand.  Any nurse that has worked with me can tell you this is true.  The most recent being, well, this week.  I cut a fallopian tube out of a woman with a moving, live baby in it.  This woman had been trying to get pregnant for years, and this was her miracle baby, and if I didn't remove it, it would have killed her.  While opening her tube fully, after the case, (as it had already started to rupture) we saw a tiny, little helpless baby. The tech wanted to see it.  Not because it was a freak show, but because she wanted to say goodbye.  We stroked it's head and said that we were sorry. I choked back tears (which are flowing freely now) and went to talk to the husband.  I approached him as upbeat as ever, completely stuffing the moment I shared with his unborn baby down in the crevices of my soul.  I told him how perfectly the surgery went, how little blood loss there was, post operative instructions and when to follow up.  "Any questions?', I asked cheerfully.
"Did you see it?  Was there really a baby?"
"Yes, sir.  I did." And I proceeded to talk to him about how we can never make another Momma, and how dangerous ectopic pregnancy can be and...
"Was it alive?"

Our eyes locked. His filled with tears. And, this giant of a man, I hugged. And he cried. Hard.  I didn't.

This is why that picture has gathered so much attention.  We are often seen as cold, emotionless, robotic, overpaid bookworms that get to wear scrubs and call ourselves "Doctor".  If we're really lucky, the patients even call us that too.  (Although I don't mind that half of this city calls me "Fletch")  What you don't see is what we look like on the drives home, what we tell our best friends, spouses, and colleagues.  Why sometimes we walk into our children's rooms, children that we sometimes haven't seen for literally days, and hold them while they sleep.  You don't get to see us cry.  That's not part of the deal.  We swoop in, save the day, smile cheerfully and discharge you back home like mini superheroes.

I've hauled pregnant women twice my size down the hall singlehandedly, in a bed, with the breaks stuck on, then all but throw her on a c-section table to help save her baby's life.  You don't believe me?  There's a hospital with wheel marks down the hall to this day from her room to the surgery suite.  How did I do it?  I don't know.  I've delivered a premature baby, breech, in a triage room.

Wanna know a secret?  I was scared to death, both times, and hundreds more.   No one would ever know.   When you are the doctor, then you run the room.  If you panic, everyone else does too, if you are nervous, everyone else is.  These feelings spill all over the room and eventually to the patients and their families as well.  If you aren't strong, then no one else can be either.  And so, day after day, we muster superhuman strength emotionally, mentally and sometimes even physically for our patients.

Every once in a great while, we have a moment when our guard comes down, the tears flow, the cape comes off, and you all now see, that we're human too.  Just like you.  I'm just grateful that no nurse ever got a pic of me, and grateful for that doctor's sake that there are no identifying factors in his picture.  He probably splashed his face at the drinking fountain on the way back in, grabbed a chart, worked the rest of his shift, and hopefully saved a couple more lives by the time the sun came back up.  The day we can't grieve over the ones we can't save is the day we need to hang up the cape for good.