- Dr. Adarsh Nath | Letters from the ER
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- He Died Watching Me
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It was around 03:00 a.m.
The hour of ghosts.
They wheeled him in fast.
Fifty eight.
Bare-chested, sweating buckets.
His skin grey like storm clouds.
Clutching his chest like he was trying to hold death inside his body.
His eyes -
God, his eyes -
not wide from fear, but from knowing.
From the quiet recognition that this… might be it.
“Chest pain. Left side.
One hour. Vomited twice.”
The triage nurse’s voice was steady.
But the ECG wasn’t.
ST elevations.
Tombstones on paper.
BP crashing.
Sats dipping.
Fate folding.
We were already deep inside the storm.
I snapped in gloves with hands that had done this before.
Too many times.
Loaded him. Heparinised.
Pushed opioids.
Screamed for noradrenaline infusion while preparing to secure his airway.
Because somewhere deep in my gut,
I knew we wouldn’t beat the reaper.
That’s when he looked at me dead in the eye.
Grabbed my wrist, and said:
“Don’t let me die.”
And God,
that never gets easier.
He Coded on the Stretcher
One moment, we were in it together.
The next, his heart gave up.
Gone.
Just like that.
Heart fibrillating.
It began.
Chest compressions, while I shouted for someone to shock.
His ribs cracked beneath my palms like dry twigs.
Paddles charged.
“Clear!”
His body arched off the bed like it was trying to leave itself.
Thud.
And then -
that smell.
Burnt skin.
That scorched metallic tang of charred hair and flesh.
You never forget it.
The scent of trying too late.
We shocked him a second time.
He rose again, only to fall.
Next check.
No pulse. Asystole.
We went back to compressions.
Someone called for adrenaline.
Collapsed IV line.
I tore open the groin for a femoral line.
Needle in, dark blood oozing, thick and slow - the colour of used engine oil.
No time for perfection.
We just needed a line.
The floor was slick with vomit and blood.
A junior resident slipped.
He swore.
But no one stopped.
Air forced into his lungs through the tube.
His chest rose under pressure from the bag -
a sick imitation of breathing.
Pink froth pooled at the corners of his mouth.
His lungs were drowning.
His heart, dying.
We gave it everything.
Forty minutes.
No rhythm. No quiver. Nothing left.
Until 03:45 a.m.
When I finally said,
“Call it.”
Time of death 03:45 a.m.
His Wife Was Still in Her Nightclothes
I peeled off my gloves.
They stuck to my skin.
My forearms were streaked with blood.
There was vomit on my right shoe that I hadn’t noticed until I slowed down.
The ER doors swung open.
She was there.
Just outside.
Waiting.
Barefoot.
Still in her nightclothes.
Her phone clutched tight against her chest.
Hair tied in a crooked knot like she left home in a panic.
Eyes hollowed out by hope and fear.
I didn’t need to say it.
But I did.
“We did everything we could.”
She didn’t scream, at first.
She didn’t ask a single question.
She just fell to the ground, next to my feet -
Like God took away his life… and her bones.
And then she let it out.
A scream so raw, so full of soul,
I swear he must’ve heard it as he left.
If anything could’ve pulled him back, it was that.
But he was already gone.
And I stood there -
useless.
Soaked in the blood and vomit of a man I couldn’t save.
Watching his wife break into pieces.
I thought about how I shattered his ribs.
How his eyes pierced mine before his heart fell.
How I told him we’d fight -
and we did.
Only to lose.
I didn’t go home that night - not straightaway.
I couldn’t.
Death Rode Shotgun
I drove.
Nowhere in particular.
Every red light felt like a pulse.
Every empty street, a grave.
And somewhere between the signal and static -
he got in.
Not literally.
But completely.
Passenger seat.
Seatbelt undone.
Chest still bare.
Eyes still wide.
He didn’t speak.
Didn’t need to.
I could feel him.
In the sting of dried blood.
In the ache of my wrists.
In the smell of fear that still clung to my scrubs.
He just sat there.
Not angry.
Not cruel.
Just present.
Watching.
Waiting.
Asking me without words:
“Was I enough for you to fight for?”
And that part of me -
the part that stays sterile, composed, professional -
splintered.
Because sometimes, death doesn’t leave.
It lingers.
It follows you home.
It rides shotgun.
And it doesn’t let you forget.
Maybe one day, I’ll meet him again.
Maybe one day, I’ll see them all -
the ones I couldn’t save.
Lined up, in the dark.
Not to damn me.
Not to forgive.
Just to look.
Or maybe they won’t say anything at all.
Maybe they’ll just sit beside me.
Like he did.
Quiet.
Unflinching.
Unforgettable.
“You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.”
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More soon.
Another moment.
Another reminder that we are still, somehow, human in all of this.
Yours,
Dr. Adarsh Nath,
Letters from the ER
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