ARMY 68W, BAGRAM 2014 — The patients you cannot save and the cost of trying anyway

Bagram. Trauma platoon. Fall of 2014, when the drawdown had begun but the contact had not stopped. We were taking patients in waves from forward sites: Marines, soldiers, Afghan partners, civilians. Most of them lived. We were good. I am still proud of that. The ones I carry are the kids. Local kids. I will not describe the injuries. The shift I keep coming back to was October. Six patients in two hours, three of them under twelve. We saved two. I was the one bagging for the third when the doc called it. I came home in 2015 and went to nursing school on the GI Bill. I wanted to keep doing trauma work but I could not do peds. Could not be in a room with a child on a gurney. Took me three years and a long stretch of EMDR therapy at the VA before I could even rotate through a peds ED for nursing school. I still do not work with kids. I work adult trauma and I am at peace with that. The thing I want anyone in healthcare to hear: doing it is not weakness. Not doing it is not weakness either. Knowing which one you can sustain is the work.