Danielle Ofri

The grandson curls his hand around his grandmother's wrists and he says, she's dead, doctor.

You don't have to do any more tests.

The family joins hands and begins to pray in Spanish.

And I'm standing there with EKG jelly crusted under my fingernails, burning with embarrassment.

How could I not figure out whether or not Mrs. Rodriguez was dead?

Isn't that what doctors do?

Pronounce the time of death?

How could I ever be a doctor if I couldn't tell a dead person from a live one?

How could there exist so much to be ignorant of?

When were these magical medical skills going to materialize?

And what was I going to write on the death certificate as the immediate cause of death?

The sun came up over the East River, as it always does, even after the longest, hardest night of night float.

And as I'm signing out to the day teams, I'm thinking about Mrs. Rodriguez.

And I imagine her as a young woman, a fresh immigrant right off the boat to New York.

And maybe she came to Bellevue every year for her annual checkup.

Maybe she had her children at Bellevue.

Maybe she thought she would die at Bellevue.

Wherever she was, I hoped she forgave me for the indignity she suffered at the hands of an inexperienced intern.

Now, most of us, when we go home at the end of the day, it's the end of the day.

The light is falling, twilight's coming, dusk.