As An ER Doctor, I Knew To Expect The Unexpected. Then My Neighbors Began Arriving At The Hospital.

My thermos held boiling-hot tea, and in my insulated lunch bag was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It was the morning after Christmas, and I was mentally preparing myself to work a senior resuscitation day shift in the emergency department — and to expect the unexpected.

The sun’s rays rose over the city through the glass of the pedestrian bridge as I walked from the parking lot to the hospital lobby. In the peaceful quiet of early day, I felt grateful to care for my patients. Life was often quickly thrown into perspective in the resuscitation area. When patients came with critical conditions like strokes, heart attacks or traumatic injuries, nothing else mattered.

The flow that morning was steady. As rooms filled up, people were sent to the hallways. Around noon, a critically ill patient arrived in need of immediate central venous catheter placement to administer lifesaving medication.

At that point in my training, I had done this procedure over 50 times. I prepared the patient and quickly got the ultrasound machine ready. As I held the large-bore needle in my hand — about to enter the skin of the neck above the right superior vena cava — I heard the door slide open. I looked up and saw a face I didn’t recognize.

“Dr. Singh,” said a woman wearing scrubs who was standing at the foot of the patient’s stretcher. “There are patients here from your condominium complex. There’s been a fire.”

I looked up. She appeared oblivious to the patient, the procedure and her inopportune timing. I heard her words but couldn’t let them in.

“Thank you for telling me,” I said softly. “Please leave and shut the door.”

I closed my eyes and inhaled.

The night before, on Christmas, my fiance had come to visit. For over a year, Amandeep and