DOA

Last night as I was busy restocking my IV cart, the charge nurse came up to me and asked if she could borrow me for a while.

Following her to the viewing room, I discovered a young male not much older than myself lying on a stretcher.  Dead on arrival, he had been found by family members in the garage, sitting in the front seat of a running car.  

There wasn't a mark on him, which somehow made things more difficult.  In the past, bodies I had helped bag were victims of trauma or cardiac arrest... people we had at least tried to save.

For this patient, however, all we could do was change him into a gown, place a pillow beneath his head and lay a blanket over the body before the family came in to grieve.