It's hard, watching people die.

Waving your stethoscope over them, both knowing it's not going to do any good.

Both knowing the only answers you have are the ones they don't want to hear, and you don't really want to say. 

That not-quite-meeting of eyes, the awkward slide, as you both shy away from a truth we can't change, but don't want to be real.

"The Patient" we say in Medicine. 

Like Patient is some amorphous entity who exists for us to care for, to occasionally follow your instructions, and just as often ignore them. 

"It's hard to lose a Patient," the Veterans say.

But it's not losing a Patient that hurts.

It's losing a Person.

It's walking into a Life Interrupted,

A Job they were in the middle of,

A Great-Grandbaby to be present for,

The Love of Their Life

And knowing there's nothing you can do.

You can't stop this.

It's going to end,

One way or another.

Maybe a few weeks, maybe a few months time.

But 3 months left for their existence,

Is NOT what they had planned.

Not what you had planned.

They had planned to get better, to rise above, to conquer again.

Because it has to get better.

It has to.

Life can't end like this, so suddenly, in so much pain.

They* were going to get better

And now you both face the rising truth,

That you will not.

So we wave a stethoscope. 

Give an awkward smile. 

Gently squeeze a hand.

Both afraid of mortality,

Of speaking the Bigness of what's going on.

Unsure how to face it,

Both knowing it's true.

Lamenting the fact

We don't know what to do. 

* trying to decide whether to use They (accurate, but inherently distancing), You (hits harder but is more confusing) or We (kinda works, but also kinda ??? ) as the pronoun here