The crash call came just after 6pm, when night had fallen but the ward was buzzing with visitors. I had just settled into the last stretch of my on-call – slipping into the doctor’s office to close my eyes for the briefest moment and hopefully grab a quick bite to eat. I’d been a doctor for three weeks, and the transition from medical school had been a bumpy one: the past few days, I’d felt a tension building behind my eyes. I worried about my patients, and hadn’t quite yet learned how to healthily step away. Some nights, I’d even heard the beep of monitors and the hum of fluorescent lights in my dreams. One case in particular had been bothering me: an elderly man with prostate cancer, clearly dying. We’d provided all of his necessary anticipatory medicines and the patient and his family were all aware of what was happening. There was only one big problem: the family were completely against DNAR. Seeing how distressed his family were, the patient was also against DNAR. Although it was a medical decision, the consultants on the ward had agreed to try one thing, in the event of this patient’s heart stopping: one round of CPR and one round only.

I tried to forget the day for a moment as I slid into my chair. The shift, however, had different plans. Suddenly, my bleep spluttered into life: Emergency. Cardiac Arrest. Renal ward. My heart fell. It was him. I knew it. I swivelled from my half-slumped state and hastened into the heart of the ward. It was him. By the time I reached the bay, the team had already partly assembled. Someone was shouting times. Someone else was tearing open pads. A fellow F1 was on the chest, compressing – sweat glistening on her brow. I relieved her, swapping in. My first arrest call. I looked down at the patient’s face as I pushed down: their eyes half-closed, unfocused, staring into nothing.

CPR is a strange thing. Brutal, intimate – and nothing like anything I’d ever imagined as a kid. I felt ribs crack as I pressed down. Somewhere in the distance, the familiar voice of the patient’s wife rose into a wail. I looked again into the patient’s face, listening to the swirl of sounds around me – wondering what other patients would be thinking, feeling, fearing, beyond the flutter of blue curtains.

No one expected ROSC. I remember stumbling and almost falling backwards from shock. The nurses were shocked, I was shocked. Heck, the registrar was shocked. Two broken ribs, a barely conscious patient and an unexpected ROSC. Of course, the trouble with resurrection is that a dying patient is still dying – whether you restart their heart or not. He died hours later in pain, struggling to breathe. That night, it wasn’t just the beep of monitors and the hum of fluorescent lights haunting my dreams.