Heroes in the ER

                Yellow lights flash over several doors as voices call out from rooms and the overhead pager. Florescent lights beam from

 overhead of the nurses, doctors, and aides as they dodge EKG machines, rolling recliners, IV poles, and the elderly. They scramble to

help the sick down this brightly lit hallway that reeks with the smell of disinfectant and feces. The hallway on 3 West at Mercy

Hospital is hectic.

                As I first turn the corner to enter the hallway, I am almost run over by a doctor wearing a white lab coat followed by a nurse

frantically writing orders behind him.

                Start Heparin and give two sublingual Nitro and prep him for the Cath Lab.

                A door flings open and a nurse bolts out of a room with her arms in the air and calls out to an aide down the hall, "I have a

Code Brown, can you help?"

                Meanwhile, a busy aide walks an elderly lady into a room a few doors down. The next room is filled with family members of

a sick patient recovering from a heart attack the day before. Six family members stand with their arms crossed firing questions at the

nurse:

                "Why can't she go home today?"

                "Why is the heart monitor on and IV still in?"

                "Is the doctor going to see her today?"

                A tall bald man, blood dripping from his hand, steps out into the hall. "I'm bleeding over here!"

                For an instant, it is quiet as I pass by a lone empty room. The room is clean, the bed made, and the air is crisp and cool. The

moment of rapture is broken by the chaotic sound of an N-pole crashing to the ground. A middle-aged man looks around and picks up

the N-pole. He continues on his way with the four other N-poles tangled one next to another.

                The storage room door, in the middle of the hall, bursts open. Two nurses scamper out carrying a white portable

defibrillator, a teal medication bag, and a green oxygen tank.

                "We need to get this guy to the Cath Lab now; his pressures are only in the eighties systolic and heart rate in the thirties!"

says one of the nurses.

                "Do you have atropine in the room?" the other nurse asks.

                Simultaneously, a cart races around the corner being pushed by a man wearing a blue scrub hat, shirt pants, and booties.

                "What room is the patient in that needs to go to the Cath Lab?"

                The response of the secretary is obscured by an ear-piercing scream followed by a loud thud. A red light blinks and an alarm

rings from overhead. A woman's scratchy voice calls into a room over the intercom:

                "Can I help you?"

                "Yeah. My mother just fell on the floor and she's bleeding from her head!"

                "Okay, I'll send the nurse in right away."

Three nurses followed by a doctor race into the room as the door slams.

                As I reach the end of the hall, I see the man dressed in blue scrubs wheeling the patient away, a nurse helping the bleeding

 bald man, and a newly admitted patient entering the lone empty room. I turn the corner and continue to see flashing yellow lights as

 doctors, nurses, and aides dodge equipment down another hectic 3 West hall. However hectic the activity is, it's the teamwork of

 the self-sacrificing people that overwhelms the hall.

Note: That last sentence doesn't really work: why not?

What if she had written instead: "Behind me is the exit. I open the door, step through, and as I descend the stairs, I hear only muffled sounds that become fainter and fainter as I go down." It's not perfect, of course, but why might this be a better ending?