This week three patients died on the hematology ward.

I had met them all before, though in varying degrees. Two I had only met on the morning ward rounds, perhaps a few seconds of eye contact here and there. I had chatted to the third for 30 minutes last week, trying to take a history, but mostly talking about his life. He was still able to smile and talk fondly about his family. Weak, but still breathing. Still alive.

It feels strange to walk on the ward now, new patients sleeping where they once laid. Because I wasn’t there to see their body pronounced dead and wheeled off somewhere else, it’s like they only exist in my memory and the hospital’s electronic records. Friday afternoon, they were there. Monday morning, they were gone. There’s no “this is where patient X once laid” or photographs of them anywhere. They’re just gone.

But the strangest thing of all this is how little emotion I’ve felt. When I heard the news, I was shocked for a bit, but didn’t think too much of it. Just paused, whispered a “rest in peace”, and got on with my day. It was only when my colleague brought it up did I consider how significant it was. Yeah – the man I had spoken to last week, who told me about his childhood and love life, is now no longer alive. Isn’t that crazy? I expected, even hoped, to feel a larger wave of sadness, perhaps an inability to focus, maybe even some tears. But it just didn’t affect me that much.

Three years ago, I wrote a post outlining my fear of becoming an emotional void. It was one of my most honest and personal posts I had ever written. And now I worry my fears are coming true.

Why didn’t I feel more emotion at the news? Am I too sleep deprived, and just numb to any input? Am I too used to death, having experienced heavy loss growing up? Or am I still unconsciously processing it, waiting for the tears to erupt randomly one day?

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows has a phrase called the wends:

n. frustration that you’re not enjoying an experience as much as you should, even something you’ve worked for years to attain, which prompts you to plug in various thought combinations to try for anything more than static emotional blankness, as if your heart had been accidentally demagnetized by a surge of expectations.

Maybe I’m going through the wends and expecting too much of myself. Maybe death is just no big deal and a natural part of life. Maybe it’s fine, even good, to feel little in the face of death, as a sign of resilience.

But if it comes at the cost of my humanity and my empathy, then dear God, please let me be more sensitive. Please let me love more readily, let me cry more heavily, let me sleep less easily. Let me feel again.

RK, may you rest in peace.