MY BROTHER STOPPED BREATHING AFTER THE DOCTOR GAVE HIM THE SHOT
His color just drained away and the beeping on the monitor went flat, suddenly silent. Everything stopped for just a second, this awful quiet hanging heavy in the air, before the room exploded.
Nurses were shouting, alarms started shrieking from other machines I hadn’t even noticed before, this piercing, mechanical scream bouncing off the pale green walls. Hands were pulling me back, gentle but firm, away from his bed. The fluorescent light felt too bright, too harsh, reflecting off the polished floor.
The doctor burst in, face grim. “What happened?” he yelled, his voice cutting through the chaos. Another nurse shoved a crash cart towards the bed, the wheels rattling violently. My hands were clammy, gripping the cold metal rail of the chair I’d just been sitting in.
They worked over him, a blur of motion and urgent commands. I saw the doctor look at the empty syringe on the tray table, then back at my brother’s face. There was this flicker of something I couldn’t name – not panic, something colder, calculating? My heart was pounding so hard I thought it might shatter. Just as I was about to ask about the shot…
But then the doctor looked right at me and said, “There was never supposed to be a shot.”
👇 Full story continued in the comments…”What do you mean there was never supposed to be a shot?” I stammered, my voice thin and reedy against the din. “I just saw you – a nurse just gave him something! Right there!” I gestured frantically towards the tray table, but it was already pushed aside, forgotten in the frantic fight for my brother’s life.
The doctor didn’t even look at me. His eyes were fixed on the monitor, on my brother’s pale face. “Charge to two hundred!” he barked, snatching paddles from the crash cart. “Clear!”
A jolt ran through my brother’s body, a violent arching of his back against the bed. The monitor remained stubbornly silent.
“Charge again! Three hundred! Clear!”
Another jolt. My eyes blurred with tears I hadn’t realized I was crying. The room felt like a storm, violent and unpredictable. How could he say there was no shot? Did he think I was blind? Did he think I was stupid?
“I saw it!” I yelled, louder this time, my voice cracking. “He went limp right after! You gave him something!”
A nurse briefly turned a pained look towards me, but the doctor cut through everything. “Get him back!” he roared, ignoring me completely now. “Epinephrine! Push it!”
Hands fumbled with vials and syringes. I watched, heart hammering, as another substance was injected into the line in my brother’s arm. Time stretched, thick and agonizing. Every second felt like an eternity. The flatline on the monitor seemed to mock the desperate efforts around the bed.
Then, a tiny flicker. A hesitant beep. Then another, slightly stronger.
“Pulse!” someone shouted.
The chaotic energy in the room shifted, becoming slightly less panicked, more focused. The beeping grew steadier, though still dangerously slow. My brother’s chest gave a shallow, shaky rise. The color didn’t immediately flood back, but the deathly gray receded fractionally.
The doctor leaned back slightly, wiping sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. His gaze swept over the monitors, then to the nurses, and finally, briefly, back to me. The grimness was still there, but the urgency had ebbed. He didn’t repeat his denial, didn’t explain. He just nodded towards the nurse who had been working the crash cart.
“Let’s get him stabilized,” he said, his voice lower now, clinical. “Transfer him to critical care.”
My brother was breathing, shallow gasps that still terrified me, but breathing. The alarms quieted to urgent murmurs. The room didn’t feel silent anymore, but the deafening scream had subsided. As they began to carefully maneuver the bed, preparing for the transfer, I was left standing there, rooted to the spot. My brother was alive, that was all that mattered in that terrifying moment. But the image of the empty syringe, the doctor’s chilling declaration – “There was never supposed to be a shot” – hung in the air, a cold, undeniable question mark that no amount of frantic medical activity could erase.