I’m writing this because until now, hours since everything happened, I’m still trying to make sense of it all (even while sitting in front of my notebook computer).
It all started roughly four hours ago. I was at the end of a 12-hour shift at the local ER when in comes a guy frantically screaming for help. He carried a child in his arms, a little girl, all bloodied and muddy. My first though was that she must have been hit by a vehicle. I half stood from my seat as some of my colleagues rushed to her aid. Being assigned in the internal medicine department and having patients of my own, I let my friends from the trauma department handle the little girl.
Not a second passed when in rushed the mother, hysterically screaming at the top of her lungs. This time, I left my patient and stood up to help (the guys from surgery already had their hands full trying to save the little girl’s life). By the time I got to the mother, she was on the floor wailing for us to save her daughter’s life.
As I helped her up I noticed something warm run down my fingers. I looked down to see blood coming from a gunshot wound on the mother’s left arm. That was when I noticed that her daughter (the little girl) was bleeding from a gunshot wound on her left chest. By this time, she was pale as a sheet of paper.
Between gasps, the mother told me that she was a teacher and was on her way home with her husband and two young children on their motorcycle when someone sprayed them with bullets from the side of the road. She doesn’t know where her husband is and what happened to her other child, a boy of about four.
Minutes later, the paramedics brought in her husband. He was bleeding profusely from a bullet wound on his neck and chest. We all rushed to help. I did CPR on the husband but blood kept spurting out of the holes in his body.
Despite our best efforts both little girl and husband died minutes after being brought in. Before she died, a single tear escaped from the little girl’s eyes. The four year old boy was found unhurt a little while later by the side of the road. The reason for the killings? An ongoing family feud between two warring families.
As I sit here, my heart heavy due to the unnecessary loss of life, I realize that sometimes, things just don’t make sense. That sometimes, the best thing you can do is to not dwell upon it.
🙁 I miss you.
me 2. miss you too. so much. 🙁