When Lives Are Not Worth Saving

Last Sunday, I was the trauma resident on duty at the emergency room. Sunday mornings and afternoons are usually benign... much like a typical weekend when everyone just wants to bum around, too lazy to hurt one another or do something stupid. Without warning, two patients were brought in by several policemen. According to the police, they were passengers of a motorcycle that was apparently ran over by a bus. The girl looked okay... she may have several wounds and fractures, but she was evidently going to live. The same cannot be said with her male companion. He was pale, unconscious, and a lot of blood was seeping through the huge wound in his left leg. His pelvis was crushed, and I could see intestines peeking through the wound. Emergency procedures were initiated, his chest was even torn open to pump his heart, he was transferred to the operating room immediately... but from the very second I saw him, I knew he wasn't going to make it. True enough, he died in the operating room. His companion was still in shock, we had to rule out traumatic brain injury. She was stable though, and after a few hours, she was coherent, and I was stunned as I heard her tell us what happened. They were on a motorcycle when a speeding bus came up behind them. she was thrown off the motorcycle, while her cousin, who was driving, was crushed underneath the bus together with the vehicle. Then she couldn't remember anything else. She asked for the contents of her pockets, assuming we removed them. We did no such thing. We noticed both of their pockets were empty when we were looking for identification. She mentioned that both of them had wallets with a fine sum of money, and both of them had expensive cellular phones. I was horrified by what I had deduced. Some people actually stole from these victims. Instead of helping someone who was bleeding to death, they actually had the nerve to steal from them. His prognosis was bad in the first place, but bringing him to a hospital a few minutes earlier could have made a difference. They didn't just leave them to die, they added insult to injury. They threw salt in their open wounds. What goes on in the minds of those people?! Did they steal out of great need? Is the cost of living really that high, that we loose all forms of compassion just to provide ourselves with basic needs? Did they think those people are going to die anyway so they might as well steal from them since they won't ave any use for those material things anymore? I can't think of a rational explanation to justify such actions. They say all men are inherently good... when things such as this happen, I wonder how true that statement is. I doubt anyone who is inherently good can act so heartless. Evil lurks in the hearts of men.

Sometimes I wonder if all the effort we give to save lives are wasted. In the remote possibility that one of those who stole from them becomes our patient, I'd rather direct my efforts to someone else--- someone who deserves to live. Such evil men do not deserve another shot at life. Being a trauma resident can be really frustrating, and not fulfilling at all. How can you be really fulfilled when you aren't sure if you're contributing to the common good. A lot of our patients are criminals, killers, crooks. All of them deny it, but obviously a lot of them are lying. You can see it in their eyes. It's easy to see through their lies. There's this temptation to not care at all. Our work becomes purely mechanical, we suture lacerations, evacuate hematomas, dress wounds. It becomes mechanical because it's hard to relate and emphatize with such patients, just save their lives and that's it. We try not to think that we're contributing to the greater evil in this world by prolonging the lives of evil men. Fulfillment comes when we know we save lives of good people, when we save lives of people who deserve to live. Just seeing them get well is fulfilling enough. Most of the time though, we try to fool ourselves just to have some sort of fulfillment in what we do. We try not to think that we're saving lives that are not worth saving at all.