He Drown in 6 Inches of Muddy Water

Wear a Mask

It was late at night as I worked the emergency room far out in the swamp. “Should be a nice, quiet night,” I thought to myself as I prepared to get a few winks.

“Doctor, we have a code coming in,” the nurse yelled into my office as she quickly walked by to prepare.

“Car wreck. Guy was ejected. In the swamp.”

OK, we have a man (late teens, I later found out) who was likely not wearing his seatbelt. He was ejected from a single vehicle car accident. It rolled multiple times after he was ejected from the vehicle.

They brought him in, we worked the code to no avail and I called it. “Funny, he didn’t look very injured,” I thought to myself, unsure of his cause of death.

The family and bystanders arrived. It appears he was ejected, being knocked unconscious as he exited the car. He landed face down in a puddle of shallow, muddy water. No one would move him because they were afraid he may have had a broken neck.

As it turns out, he only had a very mild head injury but the bystanders, afraid to further injure him, let him drown to death right there in front of them, in the mud. Waiting 15–20 minutes for the ambulance.

I didn’t tell the bystanders. All they would have had to do is roll him over.

His family wailed and wailed for a very long time.

This is surely what it is like to watch someone die a long, lonely, horrible death because others did not wear masks, or wore them incorrectly, or did not distance. Or worse, the viciously ignorant who walk around knowing they are COVID positive and infect others gleefully. Oblivious to the days and months of gasping for air they have committed on their neighbor.

To watch someone die of an easily preventable problem is very painful. Especially when it is a prolonged, difficult death.

We have now had something like 100,000 -200,000 of this same, preventable-death situation. That is unthinkable. Shocking. Preposterous. And true.

The pain of doctors, nurses, or respiratory therapists having to watch preventable death after preventable death must take a tremendous toll on their hearts and souls. Oh, the tears they have cried.

When are citizens going to awaken and begin behaving decently to their neighbors, their friends, their family?

When will America regain its decency? Or is ‘regain’ the correct word?