"How Sad", Someone Else's Perspective

She was twenty two years old, and had a small infant she adored. Then one morning, she awoke to find that she had broken the cardinel rule of mothering and not only slept with the baby, but rolled over on it sometime during the night, smothering it, and ultimately, killing it.

A fellow paramedic and his partner handled that call, they reported that the mother was intensely depressed.
No one saw, heard, or knew anything about the mother, and how she was doing for a while. We then learned of some mental illness, either caused, or no doubt excacerbated by that circumstance, that landed her in a safe halfway house.

Fast forward two years, and I was working on my regular shift, a Saturday. I had gone into CVS to purchase some toothpaste, (others take offense to using theirs), and when I came out, my partner, K, announced she heard on the police radio of a possible overdose, not breathing, in our area of town. Not even being dispatched yet, we headed towards the address, and for some reason, it sounded familiar.

We arrived, and rushed up with all of our equipment an outside stairwell into a second floor apartment, to find the patient laying on her back, half in, half out of the bathroom. Turns out, another member of the home thought she was taking to long in the shower, so tried to bang on the door to no avail, then they broke it down, and found her on the floor, lying next to an empty syringe.

After carrying her down to the ambulance, we provided every option of life support that even the emergency room could have, to no avail. Some crew members speculated that she was just another scumbag "druggie", "who cares", I heard from another paramedic. Even I was about to toss it out as that.

Later on, I found why the address had sounded familiar, we had met before, she was depressed, and we were dispatched to go talk with her, and ended up taking her to the hospital. She was still distraught over the death of her son. I found out later that it wasn't so much illicit drugs she overdosed on, she overdosed for a reason and purpose, it was the anniversary of her infant son's death, and she still felt the extreme guilt overwhelming her to end her pain.

I felt actually badly for her, knowing what depression can feel like, but more empathizing than sympathizing, and couldn't imagine the phsycological trauma she had gone through over and over.

I ended up hurting my back on that call, and had to go in to occupational health a few days later to get rechecked to go back to work. The Nurse Practicioner asked me how it happened, and as I explained, her questions got more and more involved. She wanted to know if she had any other children (yes), etc, etc. At the end of her questions about the call, she looked as if in distress. Her eyes caught mine, and she said, "how sad", that's why I don't watch the news anymore".

I wished for a second that I could have her sheltered life, just seeing the random occ. health patient, with no real emotional turmoil or trauma involved, but then realized, I'm numb. Sure it's sad, but if that nurse was me, she would have had an emotional breakdown, but my heart is stone to others.

I realized two things that day, people are truly naive to the sadness of the world around them, and that my ejection fraction must be very low since my heart is made from stone.