active shooter

today, i feared for my life.

we were in the middle of a mass casualty situation.  the hospital was on high alert.  we were discharging people to open up beds, and the ICU was dumping out to make room for the criticals.  at this point, we didn't know much.  there was an active shooter at an outside location.  7-10 injured, all coming to us.  suspect still at large.

i saw my patients and was settling my ICU transfer when the call came out over the loud speaker.  they named off the code for 'dangerous situation', followed by the very urgent "THIS IS NOT A DRILL.  REPEAT, THIS IS NOT A DRILL".

and all at once, it was my nightmare come true.

the shooter was in the hospital.

as luck would have it, i sat through an active shooter class a month ago.  "active shooters are like water", the instructor said, "they take the path of least resistance".

they showed us this.  it gave me goosebumps.  they played a video reenactment of the columbine shooting.  i almost had to get up and walk out.

at the time, i made my plan in my head.  of all the choices (run, hide, engage) i knew that i would hide.  and it's true what they say: what you practice is what you remember.  so i did what i did all those times in my head.  pick a patient to stay with.  make sure the shooter can't get in.

i went into the room of my ICU transfer.  i shoved a chair underneath the door handle, then proceeded to push all of the furniture in the room against the chair.  i closed the blinds.  and i waited.

i waited for the gunshots and the screaming that would tell me the shooter was on our floor.

and i expected them to come, but they didn't.  i busied myself around the room, first assessing, then charting.  i called a coworker, she was watching the hallway with several others.

you couldn't have paid me enough to stand and wait for a man with a machine gun to come around the corner.

but after 20 minutes with still no gunshots and no screaming, i felt guilty about my other patients.  slowly i moved the furniture from the door.  i peeked out into the hall.  i quickly moved to my other rooms, hugging the walls and looking over my shoulder for a man with a gun.

stay in your rooms, i told them.  just to be safe.

the hospital was swept floor by floor, room by room.

no shooter.

the news was all over the place.  they kept repeating the name of the hospital, reminding everyone that there was a possibility he would come to find the victims.  repeating the phrase "lockdown".  no one in, no one out.  one channel said that he had possibly been seen in the cafeteria.

the sweep continued.  nothing.  then the news: the shooter was dead.  found at the primary scene, a suicide.

the shooter had never been in the hospital at all.

so many feelings.  relief.  embarrassment for being so scared.  resentment towards the system that allowed us to think that our lives were in jeopardy, a system that has no way to differentiate between a possible active shooter and sure threat.

and what i did, i think that i would do again.  i'm not ashamed for feeling a legitimate fear, for trying to survive when i thought that i was truly in danger.    

the hospital is usually my safe and familiar place, and today it wasn't.  it's a harsh reality, and sad to come to terms with the fact that you really aren't safe anywhere.  at church, at the grocery store, getting your nails done...people living their everyday lives are perfect targets for this type of sick violence.

and it's going to take me a while to stop thinking of myself as a sitting duck.