When the Sirens Ring (Ask Not For Whom)

On grief, mortality, and why this work matters

Yesterday, the roads by my house were closed. A massive accident that required someone to be airlifted to a hospital. The ambulance sirens blared. I had to leave the house to pick up a prescription, squinting through the red glare of lights reflected in melted snow puddles as I navigated around the orange cones. A small inconvenience while at least one family’s life was likely changed forever.

Whenever I hear those sirens, I am painfully reminded of our mortality.

For someone, this is the worst day of their lives. Those aren’t just shrill noises. They’re the sound of a desperate attempt to save a loved one. To get them to the hospital while there’s still time. To buy minutes that might buy years.

I talk often about my father’s death, but I omit the details. Some territory is simply too painful, even six years later. But on the very early morning of December 26th, 2019, those sirens rang for him. I know the feeling of time slowing down and speeding up at once.

Inside that ambulance, an EMT is working to stabilize someone’s parent, someone’s spouse, someone’s whole world. The back of that vehicle is controlled chaos. Monitors beeping, commands exchanged in shorthand, gloved hands working against a clock that doesn’t care about holidays or plans or the fact that you just had Christmas dinner together the night before.

Outside, cars pull to the side of the road with military-like precision to let the ambulance pass. We may not agree on much these days, but we all agree to clear that path. There’s something so poignant about that to me. In that moment, we’re unified in our head-hung sentiment: someone needs help, urgently. Strangers becoming part of someone else’s story without ever knowing it...

The ER team is waiting, not knowing what’s coming through the doors, while juggling thirty other patients—each with their own urgency, their own fear, their own family in the waiting room. Doctors, nurses, PAs, techs. Triaging. Prioritizing. Lives in their hands. The weight of someone’s entire world on their shoulders. My husband Ethan (one of those superheroes) always says ERs should have signs overhead that read: “Humans work here.” A reminder that the people in scrubs are doing their very best with their training, their clinical intuition, the medications and tools available to them. But sometimes, that just isn’t enough. Sometimes you do everything right and it still isn’t enough.

And in that waiting room sit the people who love whoever is on the stretcher. The desperation on their faces. The bargaining with the universe, with whatever force might be listening. The hollow look in their eyes when a doctor finally emerges to deliver news that will shake their world like a snowglobe in an instant. I know that look. I’ve worn it.

Lexapro may have numbed some of my sharper edges, but I will always get a lump in my throat when I hear those sirens. If I’m home, I instinctively walk through the house to do a headcount, even if I know for certain that the kids are in the den watching Percy Jackson, where I just delivered their juiceboxes. I need to see them. Put my hands on their foreheads to feel their warmth. I’ll call Ethan at work, where I know he has been and will be for several hours, just to hear his voice. Just to know. (And yes, I’ll even call my mother, over a thousand miles away in Florida, for the reassurance that she, too, is okay.)

The saying that health is wealth is not just a platitude. It’s a universal truth. The kind you don’t fully understand until you’re bargaining for more time with someone you love.

And for those of us in public health, in science, in medicine... this is the work. We are trying to prevent those sirens from ever needing to ring. One vaccine, one conversation, one piece of accurate information at a time. We can’t stop every accident on a snowy road. But we can fight like hell against the preventable stuff. That’s the job. That’s why it matters.

Stay Curious,

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