You Can't Win Them All

During one particularly busy night (who am I kidding, they're all busy these days), with stretchers lining the hallway and our trauma bay full, EMS radioed in from the scene of a bad MVC with a report of three incoming traumatic cardiac arrests.

What's worse than scrambling to throw patients on portable monitors, playing bumper cars with stretchers to fill every last inch of hallway space, raiding unused monitor leads from exam rooms, spiking fluid bags and hurrying to change suction canisters before the patients arrive?

Finding out that all three were pronounced in the field. Three young kids already so far gone they didn't even make it to the hospital.