“The way out is through the window.” The invisible thought ricocheted in my head and came out as a silent whisper.
Mr. Peabody was an 73-year-old in the last stages of death. He was comatose, and I was meeting him for the first time. I was taking over his care as the attending doctor for the week.
There were two beds in the hospital room. The nurses had tucked him in like a burrito under crisp clean white blankets. His bed was near the door and far from the window. His skin was pale, hair white, eyes closed, slight overweight, tall man. There were no infusion pumps, no heart monitors, the room was quiet. I watched his chest for movement. Time seemed to stretch as I held my own breath. As I grew still, his slow shallow breathing seemed like a figment of my imagination.
The inpatient hospice facility was full, so he remained in this hospital bed until hospice could take over the case. He had no family. The room was empty and still. Through the fourth-floor window, I could see the blue skies and the tops of trees. “The way out is over there,” I let the thought linger in my mind. Perhaps he could hear it, perhaps I could push the thought out to him. I paused to feel the stillness of the room.
In this final transition, how would his spirit find the way out? I said a silent prayer. I let my eyes and thoughts focus out the window. “It’s ok to go. It’s ok to go. It’s ok to go.” As a doctor, death is often the enemy. Here it was the way out.
I left the room to write a progress note in the chart. He was a new patient to me so I leafed through the chart. “Awaiting hospice. End stages, shallow breathing…”
As I was finishing my note, his nurse called my name from across the doctor’s area. I had spoken with her this morning about all the patients that we had in common.
“He’s gone,” she said. I looked at her perplexed. “Mr. Peabody,” she said, “You were just in there. He just passed away.”
A flood of emotions came through me, and something came over me that felt like a blessing. Had he heard me? I went back to his room. Listened for a heartbeat, and then came back to change my progress note to an expiration note.
The feeling of being blessed stayed with me until the next day.