We had a Pedi code brought into the ER by private vehicle. A woman drove up to the ER entrance, placed a blanket-wrapped toddler on a wheelchair, and drove off to park her car. She didn’t say anything and a nurse walking by noticed a small foot sticking out. It was a lifeless child. A code white was called, and the child was rushed to the trauma room, and CPR was started. We all responded to the code white, information little by little while performing compressions on the cold body of a 2-year-old with heavy mottling. The sibling and the mother came back after a couple of minutes, and the sibling asked what was happening. The mother was in tears. Nurse Beth McCall very kindly explained to the sibling that we needed to help his little sister. Our trauma room doubles as a simple X-ray room, and there are LED glass and partitions in the room to stand behind for X-rays. Beth took the sibling behind that glass so they wouldn’t see us working a code on the patient. The patient’s sibling told Beth and a Social Worker that the patient died last night, and they told the mom, but she was sleeping and didn’t go check on the 2-year-old patient.

Beth began to play with the child who told her this, and they started drawing. Beth and the child started coloring in pictures and playing with small items we have for children in the ER. Nurse Beth did all this within arm’s reach of the staff member tuning the code at a computer in the same trauma room where we did CPR on this lifeless 2-year-old. Those of us who did CPR and worked the code, got small bits of information at a time such as unknown downtime, then even though it was 1400 hrs, it was passed on that mom found the child this way this morning, and the sibling stated to Social Worker, “My sister died last night, and I told my mom, but she was sleeping”. All of us knew the child was too cold to bring back, with asystole on every rhythm check, zero blood return on IVs and on a BG check, and nothing on end-tidal or SpO2, but we gave the patient every fighting chance we could. The whole time, Nurse Beth kept the sibling focused on her, with a smile on her face, in full earshot of everything going on. Nurse Beth was able to put a smile on a child’s face while the sibling was getting CPR less than a few steps away behind a glass. Nurse Beth kept the sibling low to draw and play so they wouldn’t see us as we worked the code.

Nurse Beth kept that child smiling and occasionally laughing with joy as she distracted them the entire code. Yes, a large group worked the code, but Beth was able to raise the spirits and distract the kid from the scene that unfolded, as ER staff fought back tears the entire time. It was a very heavy atmosphere to say the least, it was suspicious from the start, and Nurse Beth made sure that she made the sibling of the patient as comfortable as possible and played with them. Unfortunately, the patient died long before they came to us, and we called it. Law enforcement was brought in and took over from there. The sibling was taken from the mother, and the mother was incarcerated. I have worked with some incredibly talented folks in my 14 years. I have been part of hundreds of codes while working on the ambulance during that time. Nurse Beth handled herself and did something so different, knowing she could not remove the child from the room because it was a busy ER and numerous other legal reasons, given how suspicious it was from the start, was one even I will never forget. The debrief after was tough, and many people cried. But Nurse Beth’s performance stood out amongst everything that happened.