The touch of death

Well, it had to happen, sooner or later...

It was supposed to be a very fun night: kangoo with Laura and comedy show with other friends.
Instead I found myself spending the evening talking to a counsellor asking me how I felt about death.

Exactly what she expected me to say I don't know...
That I feel sorry for the family?
I feel that the patient shouldn't have died?
I feel it's unfair?

I just looked at her and I said "It's ok, it's part of the job, I knew it was going to come... at some point"
As she prodded even more I promised I'd go home, spend some time thinking about it and write a piece. A piece my teachers would be proud of, something that would really show how "reflective" my writing can get.
But does anybody really care about what you write when you're analysing your feelings?

When my pager started beeping tonight the last thing I expected was to be summoned to the bedside of a 37 year old guy who just 2 days ago was smiling on the operating table.
He was dead.

I shouldn't feel responsible, I personally have done nothing wrong, but I feel a great sense of anger and I should get over that too!
Can I say that this is unfair? Is it really about fairness?
Why does a guy who is my age dies after surgery?
He was weak, stomach cancer and all, tumor goes away after chemotherapy and then comes back with a vengeance. This time it's surgery... But he doesn't do well and leaves earth...

I couldn't bear looking at his wife, I sat outside his room for a while and all I could hear was the constant sobbing and the desperation in the words of this young woman. She could hardly breathe amongst her tears and I had to appeal to every ounce of self control I had not to start crying too... right there...
Memories of the pain that death causes on the ones left behind still fresh in my mind after my mum passed away...

And then the counsellor I was assigned to asking all those questions I didn't have an answer to... Or maybe I just didn't want to answer. The more she was asking the more I was reluctant to talk.
I've always said to myself that when the moment would come I'd be ok, it's part of being a doctor, that an "oh, that's sad" comment would do to express my feelings and that I would briskly move on to the rest of the jobs to be done. But I was just fooling myself.

And maybe it's because I was joking with the guy before surgery, maybe because we shared the same love of cats, maybe because he called me "his doctor", or maybe just because I perceived him as a human being and not just like a patient...
I am a bit dumbfounded because, like someone who has forgotten to activate the alarm gets the house burglarised, I felt robbed of my strong facade, of the professional attitude a doctor should approach death with...

But I'm only human and so, away from other people's eyes, I cried...
Does that make me a bad doctor? Does that say that I should not be working in this field because my heart is too tender? Or does it just mean that I have the empathy needed to understand what it feels like?

I'm just full of pain now...
The touch of death is always cold, no matter how close you are to those who leave...