The Man Who Would Not Die

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Tuesday, 04:11 a.m.

He arrived not on a stretcher, but in the arms of his brothers.

Two uniformed police officers, breathless from the run, carried him through the ER doors.

One gripping his torso, the other his legs.

Blood on his temple. Shirt soaked in sweat.

A life, still wearing his badge, slipping away in real time.

One of them said. Almost apologising.

His eyes were half-open, but vacant.

I placed two fingers on his neck.

No pulse.

It wasn’t a faint.

It was a cardiac arrest.

Twenty Minutes of Fury

I called it.

We moved fast.

CPR. Airway. Two large-bore IVs.

The monitor lit up - ventricular fibrillation.

Heart in a spiral.

A rhythm of chaos.

A rhythm that kills.

We shocked.

CPR. Adrenaline.

Next check. No pulse. VF.

Shocked again.

Compressions hard and fast, bruising muscle, breaking bone if needed-

Anything to push life back into his body.

Time passed, waiting for none.

And then, after twenty brutal, breathless minutes-

A rhythm. A pulse. A chance.

We got him back.

The Enemy

The ECG printed like a death sentence.

STEMI. Massive.

An acute heart attack.

He was in his early thirties.

Lean. Athletic. A police officer on his night duty.

A man trained to face danger, not to fall victim to his own heart.

His BP began to slide. We started him on inotropes.

Cardiology was called. He was holding on - barely.

And then, just as the dust began to settle, his heart betrayed him again.

Another Descent

Bradycardia.

Then asystole.

Flatline on the monitor.

No hesitation.

Another round of CPR.

Another push into the void.

Twelve more minutes.

No pulse.

And then, miraculously - again.

A heartbeat.

This fighter’s body refused to stay dead.

The Reason

I walked out to counsel the family.

We had to prepare them.

And that’s when I saw her.

His wife.

Young.

Pregnant.

Hands resting over her belly, as if she were holding everything left of her world inside it.

She didn’t speak.

Didn’t cry.

Just stood frozen. Eyes wide.

I told her that we’re trying, but it probably fell on her deaf ears.

But in that silence, everything was said.

She was watching the space I had just come from.

As if she could see through the doors and walls, and into the fate itself.

The Line I Would Not Cross

Inside, the alarms blared again, echoing through the hall.

Cardiac arrest. Third time.

I ran.

Flatline.

CPR resumed.

Adrenaline.

The team was exhausted. But no one stopped.

There was no clinical rationale left.

Only will.

He was not dying tonight.

Not on my shift.

Not while his wife stood in that hallway.

Not while their unborn child waited to meet him.

Ten minutes.

A rhythm, a pulse.

We got him back. Again.

From the Brink: A Return

Cardiology arrived.

They rushed him to the cath lab, placed an intra-aortic balloon pump.

His coronaries opened.

Blood flowed.

By morning, he was in the ICU.

Hooked to machines. On mechanical ventilator. Eyes closed, but alive.

Day Two.

He opened his eyes.

Turned. Slowly and deliberately, looked at his wife.

He moved his hand, found hers, and held it. Tightly.

He was here. He had come back.

Three times, from the dead.

Amor Fati: The Fire That Shapes Us

I don’t know what he remembers of that night.

But I’ll remember all of it.

Emergency Medicine teaches you to guard your hope.

To hide it under the layers of science, statistics, protocols.

But sometimes, a patient reminds you why you believed in the first place.

His heart stopped three times.

But he came back.

For her. For their child. For a life unfinished.

And in that quiet moment, something echoed in me:

A Stoic phrase.

Latin for “love of fate.”

Not just acceptance. Not tolerance. But love.

To embrace even this - the pain, the fear, the chaos.

Not because it’s easy. But because it’s yours.

To love the fire for how it forges you. Even if it burns.

If this made you pause, forward it to someone who might need it.

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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

Disclaimer:

Patient details have been changed to protect confidentiality. This is a personal reflection, not medical advice or substitute for professional care.