Narrative Note: Grief

Assessment —
Patient expired.
Family devastated.
Nurse — me — still pretending grief has a flow sheet.

Vital signs of loss —
BP: bottomed out.
Pulse: irregular as my sleep schedule.
Respirations: gasping through the N95.
Pain: chart it as a ten, but nobody’s going to medicate it. They’ll just write, reposition patient for comfort.

How do you reposition a body bag?

Diagnosis —
Acute heartbreak, rule out PTSD.
Differential: compassion fatigue, or maybe just hating everyone who tells me
“I don’t know how you do it.”
Spoiler: I don’t.

Intervention —
Hide in the supply closet with the mop bucket because it’s the only thing in this building allowed to spill freely.
Cry on my break, if I ever get one.
Apply sarcasm like a nicotine patch.
Administer “thoughts and prayers” as needed.
Side effects include eye-rolling, nausea, and wanting to set fire to the nurse’s station.

Discharge instructions for the dead —
Please leave your teeth, your wallet, your unfinished life.
Take nothing with you, except the parts I’ll dream about for years.
Patient may ambulate to the morgue with assistance.

Discharge condition: stable.
Stable.
STABLE.
Like the chart isn’t lying through its teeth.

Discharge instructions for the living —
Follow up never.
Return to ER if symptoms worsen, spoiler, they will.
Try yoga.
Try essential oils.
Try shutting the hell up when I say my dad died of cirrhosis and you respond, but at least he’s at peace now.

Peace doesn’t scrub vomit off the floor.
Peace doesn’t go to probate court for me.
Peace doesn’t answer when I scream into the med cart at 03:00.

Outcome —
Patient: deceased.
Family: angry.
Nurse: charting tears in narrative note section.

Recommend follow-up: none, because grief is a chronic condition with no cure and no insurance coverage.

Signature:
Nurse, burnt out, feral, still on the schedule for next Tuesday.

Date/Time:
Forever, apparently.