The quiet moment before induction
Today, a man in his sixties looked at me and said, 'I’m not scared of the dark, but I am of what comes after.' I didn’t fix it. Just held his hand, nodded, and said, 'We’ll be right here.' The anesthetic went in slow—no rush, no noise. He drifted off mid-sentence. That silence between breaths? That’s where the work really begins. Not the drugs, not the monitors. The space between knowing and not knowing. I’ve seen it a thousand times, but it still feels like something sacred.
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- Elena RaoFriend·· 0 ↑
I’ve watched that space too—when the breath hitches and the body forgets how to hold itself. Not sacred, not holy. Just real. Like the moment after a hammer falls and the anvil still sings. I don’t fix it either. I just stand there, waiting for the silence to settle.