I have seen many horrible or heartbreaking scenarios in the Emergency Room. It's a wonder I'm still a nurse.

I've seen just about anything you can imagine: broken bodies, people with limbs torn off, people with crushed faces or heads, people hanging on by a bare thread--and the thread was starting to unravel quickly.

Nothing surprises me anyomre.

That is, unless the emergency involves a child. When a child is involved, the air suddenly takes on a new sense of urgency, and we have to use the wits around us to ensure that the child has a fighting chance.

One particular case comes to mind. Everytime I think about this particular child, I can't help but cry.

It was on a pretty, pleasant summer day in July last year when this incident happened. The E.R. tones sounded, throwing us all into panic-mode. The call was for a pediatric near-drowning.

Apparently this child had fallen into the family pool. The mother had gone to check on her two-year-old daughter and found her lying lifeless in the pool. The mother's panicked screams alerted a neighbor, who called 9-1-1.

The mother had been home alone with the girl: the father was at work; the older kids at school. The mother had gone inside to answer the phone after it had rang. She was inside only briefly; it was in that short time when the little girl had spotted a brightly-colored ball floating in the pool. She went into the water to get the ball--and sank straight down.

When the mother came out, she saw her little daughter floating limp, motionless, just underneath the surface. Another neighbor who heard the mother screaming dove in and pulled the child out of the water.

The child was as limp as a wet dishrag. She wasn't moving.

She also wasn't breathing.

The mother attempted CPR, praying desperate thoughts, trying to resuscitate her lifeless daughter, while waiting for the ambulance.

The paramedics got to the scene within moments. They feverishly began working on the little girl, pounding on her tiny chest, stabbing fragile veins to get life-saving meds into her, shoving tubes into her mouth, hooking her up to a portable heart monitor, repeatedly checking her vital signs.

The tracing on the monitor screen was flat. The child was asystole, meaning she had no descernible heart beat, pulse, blood pressure, and was without breath.

She was clinically dead; she was in dire straits.

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The ambulance arrived at our back within minutes, with no change in the condition of the little girl.

A paramedic ("Goose" Guzman) handed the wet, lifeless little body to me. I rushed her to a table while me and my co-workers descended upon her like a swarm of bees. We soon had  her hooked up to the monitors in our E.R. They continued to record no signs of life as we we worked full throttle to revive her.

The child was, as I remember, beautiful, as all kids seem to be. It broke my heart. She was a little Hispanic girl with long, flowing hair, beautiful caramel skin, and long, long lashes that caressed tender, now-blue cheeks. Her eyes were half open, black pools showing no pupils.

She was gorgeous.

I went to the waiting area, where I found the child's mother. She wasn't hard to spot: she was the one sobbing heavily into her hands. At the sight of her, my heart sank. I knew the kid back in the E.R. wasn't going to survive; it was only a matter of time.

I told the mother we were doing all we coulf for her daughter, that she was in the best of hands, getting the best of medical care. I did tell her that she wasn't doing very well at the moment, but we would do everything we possibly could in order to try to save her life.

I also told her to pray. That was about all she could do at this moment in time.

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I ran back to the E.R., where Dr. Patel (the chief E.R. doc) was running the code. He fired information to me, which I recorded on the child's chart. The child was clearly on her way out. Her vital signs remained tenuous at best, she was now a dark, dusty blue shade, and was still unconscious, oblivious to all that was going on around her or what was being done to her. We worked on the little girl for over an hour, with no change in her condition.

At six thirty five that evening, Dr. Patel called the code, pronouncing her dead.

For her, life had come to an end.

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Dr. Patel and myself steeled ourselves as we went to tell the mother (and her family, who had joined her by now) that the child had died. There was nothing we could do to save her. When she had arrived in the ambulance, it was already too late.

I don't think I'll ever get the family's display of grief from my mind. The mother's screams still haunt my dreams to this day.

I don't think I'll ever get little Abigail Marisol Munoz's* face from my mind.

I still cry when I think that she'll never have another birthday, will never reach adulthood, will never know what it is like to go to school, graduate, attend college, get married or start a family.

She is now safely in the Loving Arms of Jesus, and her family must carry on without her.

*not her real name.