I.C.U. (I See You) by Dr. Shaheeda Ahmed

This past May, the Department of Medicine’s Culture & Inclusion portfolio hosted its sixth annual Story Slam. These events celebrate storytelling by allowing participants to share brief stories with an audience. This year’s theme was ‘What’s On Your Mind?’

Below is the transcript for the story cardiologist, Dr. Shaheeda Ahmed, shared at the event, entitled I.C.U. (I See You):

I see you. Many years ago, you knocked on my door. Newly married, you followed your new wife’s orders faithfully. You had heart disease in childhood needing surgeries. It was time to re-engage with a Cardiologist… make sure all your reconstructed cardiac connections were still working well. After all these years, incredibly, they were. And then we made one more special connection… ours.

We were both young at the start. You, a young patient, with a heavy bag of heart disease, were determined to not let it weigh you down in life. I, a newly minted staff, was naive to the challenges we would face, but full of hope to keep you healthy. I saw you at your best, expanding your beautiful family and thriving professionally. I also saw the worst, your heart beating near death’s door. We shared in the disappointment of, “No, there is nothing more to do” and reveled in the miracle of survival, beating odds time again. And so we grew together… doctor and patient bonded by simply being human… year after year.

And now here I am, again, in ICU with you. An army in surgical greens cares for you like a soldier wounded in battle. Your life has been checkered with bullets before, but none so wounding as this. I emerge from the ICU searching for your wife. Instead, I see a butterfly of innocence in the shape of a little girl. She wanders freely from chair to chair, corner to corner, passing time obliviously in a waiting room heavy with adult dread. She knows and does not know what’s on the other side of the door. You, her father, fighting for your simple, but not so simple, wish. You simply want to live.

You may look still, tethered to a web of IVs and pumps balancing life. Your heart may be resting, supported artificially on a heart lung machine. But I see you. I see you pour your blood, soul and tears, literally and figuratively, through a circuit of cannulas giving your all, day in and day out. Your heart has stopped but you have not, because on the other side of the door is your little girl. A little girl wearing a yellow shirt, like the sun deflecting impending hurt. She’s just starting to rise, too young to hear, the truth that beckons, with each second nears.

I know the circuit is slowing. The way out is closing. A cacophony of desperate medical ideas cry like beeping alarms. We are trying, trying, trying. You are fighting, fighting, fighting. With unclipped wings, your little girl, should be flying, flying, flying.

Even in final breaths of courage, fierce, you still show us all what it means to simply live. Just live. I see you.