This, is the story of how I died. Oh don’t worry! This is actually a very fun story and truth be told it isn’t even mine…
~ Tangled…
So, I died this morning.
Don’t worry, I came back good as new within the hour J It was all part of a safety exercise. Once in a while the ship has us run a massive emergency drill that simulates what would happen if there was an explosion or a very large fire with a lot of people hurt all at once. So a handful of us volunteered to be victims. We filed into the show room this morning and were all given labels as to what was wrong with us, some of us had broken limbs (one of us was missing a limb altogether) and some of us were just unconscious, I was one of those.
As I was lying there on the showroom floor, trying to remember not to move, waiting for the medical team to reach me (unfortunately they didn’t reach me in time, hence why I “died” this morning) – I found myself in a unique position to observe – or at least listen – to how people react to trauma, even imaginary trauma.
When we first started the exercise, people were not really taking the whole thing all that seriously; there were two “conscious” victims up on the stage, at first their calls for help were rather light-hearted, almost non-sensical. Nothing that serious. But as time went on and no one came to help us, those calls for help? They got panicked, they started to feel almost real. Even though logically we all knew that this was just a drill, that there was nothing wrong with us. Our dancers didn’t have missing limbs and broken legs, and I wasn’t actually slowly stopping breathing…
Nothing quite like hearing someone from the stage say…
I think Shaughnessy’s gone already…
Your mind paints odd and amazing pictures in a circumstance like that. I was very aware of everything around me, even though I was not moving, lying there with my eyes closed. I was aware when each of my fingers started getting cold, when my neck was stiff, when they moved my head a little too hard.
There were many things going through my head while I was lying there; but one thing that bounced around a lot was that if this was a real situation. If this had really happened in the show room and I had really been there. Then I wouldn’t have been alone, because unless he was completely unable to move himself – there is no way that Amras wouldn’t have found his way to me; and done everything possible to figure out how to make me all right.
That helped, as I lay there idly contemplating my own mortality.
And I remembered a lot of what my Dad taught me about first aid. I actually knew big chunks about how to fix what was wrong with me! Which really surprised me, because I thought I’d long since forgotten all of that. But I couldn’t exactly jump up and down and say “hey! Someone should really be giving me mouth to mouth, there’s a mask right over there!” – because I was supposed to be unconscious, so instead I was more lying there thinking “well, I could have a blocked airway, and I know how to fix that, or I’m pretty sure I know how to fix that….but I’m supposed to be unconscious, so I will just lie here and be dead.”
It was a very strange morning…
Having medical training and having responded to emergencies, I cannot stress enough how important it is to have practice, knowledge, and a calm, analytical mind. It is odd where a mind goes when movement and speech are not an option.