On the Metro

Last night on the metro, I was disturbed by a conversation I couldn't help overhearing.  Four gals, dressed preppy as could be, were talking loudly about yet another friend's wedding which was to take place this morning. Hair pulled back, earrings, purses. They looked nice enough, but they were anything but nice talking about their friend, the bride-to-be.

"Can you believe her?!"
"I know, it's like she's lost her f***ing mind, getting married."
"Yeah - just 27 and she's f***ing getting MARRIED."
"You couldn't force me to get married with a gun to my head." 
"Someone should have just shot her."
"What kind of a b*** does she think she is, marrying some idiot straight-lace.  He's probably a virgin or something."
"Ha! I hope she f***s around on him."
"Yeah, with them keeping separate apartments and all till now.  It's like you want to say, "Lay off the f***ing statement."
"God, I mean, what are they thinking? Probably they think they're going to be monogamous or something!"
"Haha, right - not!  I'll believe it when I see it.  Not in this modern era!"
"Ding, dong, here comes the divorce."
"I mean, what's the point anyways - what does she think she's getting tomorrow? An entrance into old people life, that's what.  Seriously, what the f*** is the big deal with people?  What do they think they're getting that I'm missing?  WHAT am I missing!? Nuh-thing. God, thank God, I'm free to f*** whoever I want."
"She's an f***ing b****."

They were gleeful practicing their backstabbing comments for the next morning: bridesmaids prepping for the big day in their friend's life, begrudging their friend her marriage and all her hopes for it.  Now granted, I don't know what was really going on.  Maybe they were peeved about something the friend had done.  Or maybe they were jealous.  Or perhaps it was a show, as they tried to prove to the Cardinals fans sitting nearby on the Metro just how crass they could be.

But I found myself feeling so angry and so tired. It wasn't that I was offended or even all that surprised; in many ways it was just an ordinary conversation overheard on the metro not so different from most conversations on public transport in terms of gritty vulgarity.  Rather, it was that I couldn't stop thinking about a couple that came into the hospital around 4:00 that afternoon. We were paged for a cardiac arrest - male in the ED trauma; wife in the ER waiting room.

My preceptor chaplain and I arrived at the trauma bay just as the doctors and nurses were putting down their equipment and turning away from the man's dead body. The husband had been brought in for cardiac arrest, but the doctors couldn't bring him back. My preceptor and I glanced at each other, wishing we hadn't checked on the husband, wishing we didn't know.  The wife was waiting for us in the ED's quiet room.  She was an elderly woman and was desperate for her husband of thirty-something years to be alright.  She was sitting there in the quiet room nervous and straight on the edge of the seat as she told us about her husband, and all the years they'd been married so far.  It seemed forever before the doctor came.

When the doctor told her, she literally crumpled into herself, looking very, very old.  I hadn't realized that so much of her had been nervous energy.  All her size seemed to constrict, deflating and caving suddenly from the inside.  When we took her back into the trauma bay, she cried loudly and leaned over him for a long time.  Then, when we finally walked back out through the trauma room, even the nurses glanced away as she moved past.  She was shaking with grief and it was hard to watch.  Maybe this struck me more than some of the other deaths because it was just her and no other family, this solitary wife with so much anxious love and then devastated grief for her husband.

So I sat there on the Metro, listening to these hipster Metro-riders making snide comments about the wedding, and I felt angry.  At first I thought I was angry because of these loud, crass talkers on the metro, until I dismissed that for they were petty. Then I thought I was angry on account of the the couple in the Emergency Department, that their tragedy was more of a shock than I realized - and yet for all the cases we get there, this cardiac case was relatively tame and well-within the extremities of my experiences thus far in the hospital.  And so I realized I was angry on behalf of the bride and her husband-to-be.

I'll never meet them and know nothing about them - but I hope this couple that got married today has a beautiful marriage.  I hope they treat each other well and that they have a long time to learn how to do that.  I hope that they have the good wishes of their family and friends today, and the blessing of God for every day after this.  And I hope it's a long, long time before either of them ends up in the ER, dying and grieving and thinking back on a life lived together.

Ah, CPE - what an experience.