Promise me you won't leave me?

"I don't care what you say, I'm not going" she said for the tenth time. We'd been called to a lady with neck pain which radiated down to her chest. She was adamant it wasn't chest pain radiating up to her neck but I thought it was worth splitting hairs over. She used to be a nurse at the hospital and didn't want to go. I'd spent the best part of an hour trying to convince her to go, I thought she was having a posterior MI and I was having trouble getting her to understand the seriousness, she was in denial .

Her husband pleaded, "just go and get it checked out love, for me please?" "I'm not staying in" she replied, "and I'll only go if you promise not to leave me" a silence fell in the room as I realised she was looking at me. "if you don't promise then I'm not going".  We agreed that I couldn't promise to stay for long but would happily get her booked in and leave her with a nice nurse. I hoped to God there was one on duty. 

We put her on our carry chair despite her protests "I'm not dying you know" she said as I strapped her in. "give us a kiss love" said her husband on the way out, "I'll sort the dog and lock up and be up there soon ok?" 

"ah stop being so soppy" she said refusing a kiss. Thank god I stopped the chair and told her to stop being so mean and give him a kiss. 

We hooked her back up to our equipment in the vehicle and got a line in, I just had a gut feeling. "You can stop looking at that machine, I'm not going anywhere" she said. We went in red and asked to go into resus, I couldn't shake that niggling feeling in my tummy. I gave quite a comprehensive detailed handover and for once the nurse listened to the details, I went to book her in, as I walked out the door the woman called to me; "Remember your promise!"

"2 minutes!" I replied as I headed towards reception. 

It was quite busy, we had to go into the paediatric resus as the 2 adult resus bays had poorly patients in. I had a quick natter with the receptionists as I waited for the printer to kick into life. As I stuck the stickers on the forms I heard someone shouting for help. As I ran back across the department and into resus she had arrested. The nurse was struggling to get the trolley flat, I began CPR whilst the nurse got some help. The doctor who came in was shit. I know that's incredibly unprofessional but he was. We shocked her a few times and did a few rounds of CPR but we couldn't shock her out of VF. I heard the doctor say "time of death...." and I questioned him "you can't call it?" 

He said it again: "time of death......" I looked at the monitor and stated what I thought was obvious "She's in VF! You can't call it when she's in VF!!!!" 

As he walked past me banging in to my side he said "make sure she's stopped quivering before you let her family come in".

I stood open mouthed. This isn't what I'd promised. I'd like to be able to sit here and tell you that I stood there and fought for this woman, but I didn't. I was a newly qualified para who still doubted my ability. If this had happened now in my career I would like to think that I would have the noggin to stand up to the dickhead of a doctor and fight.