The year is 1987.

The planet is Earth.

In a suburb of Los Angeles, California, an ambulance screams its way into the Emergency bay of City Hospital.  The driver jumps out to assist his partner, who is squeezing an Ambu bag to breathe for the patient, whose gurney is now being sped through the hospital doors.

As they run, the driver gives the information on the patient: “29-year-old white female, multi-drug and alcohol overdose, her friend called 911 when he could not awaken her, then he left the scene. She was in respiratory arrest when we got there but she had a pulse.  BP 60 palp. We started bagging her at 8:15.”  They quickly pull her into a Trauma Bay, where five people jump into swift and skilled work upon her.

The doctor shouts out his orders, asking for a blood alcohol level and a drug screen panel.  Renny Gudreau, who is a lab assistant, jumps in beside a nurse to draw blood for the tests.  The vein is almost impossible to find, because there is almost no blood pressure.  “Let’s get that Narcan wide open on her"— but a loud flat beep cuts through all other orders.  Renny has gotten 10cc of blood from a woman who is almost dead.  She hands the syringe to Paul, her trauma partner, who runs the blood back to the lab for STAT testing.  Renny’s job is to stay with the patient in case the doctor orders more tests.  But now they are “coding” this 29-year-old woman—“jump starting” her with a defibrillator, again and again, and doing chest compressions in between the shocks.  No more tests will be ordered for this patient, whose flat line remains adamantly on the screen.  They jump start her again and again…because she is so young.  But the penlight the doctor shines in her eyes reveals that the pupils are fixed and dilated.

“Time of death, 9:06 pm” the doctor pronounces, wiping his face.

The staff is silent as they roll the gurney aside, into a curtained cubicle. They need to make room for a new and living patient, to whom the doctor immediately turns his attention.  This is the way life is in an Emergency Department.  Attendants from the morgue will take over the care of the dead body, which the young woman with the black hair has just become.

Renny ducks behind the curtain where the young woman lies—still, but warm.  She looks at the woman, her shiny black hair, her smooth clear skin, and sees that the woman has, on her left cheekbone, a tiny tattoo—in the shape of a teardrop--coming down from her eye.

Tears fill Renny’s eyes. Twenty-nine years old, she thinks to herself. that could have been me.

She grabs her tray of equipment and heads back to the lab.

***

10:07:39 AM