Healing

Surreal disbelief
and shock. Time to heal, process,
love, grieve, and support

Class interruptions are normally met with cheers and celebration.  Not this time.  Instead, when our pathophysiology instructor told us that there was an “emergency situation across the street,” my mind started racing. At Hopkins?! Who? Why? Where? No way this is happening.  I’m a chronic worrier by nature, and when things like this happen, it’s hard to keep myself from imagining the worst possible scenarios.  And then to find out that a doctor was shot, well, that made it all the more real. I don’t know the doctor that was attacked and I might never meet him or any of the other doctors and nurses that were working on Nelson 8 that day, but being a part of the Johns Hopkins family, I couldn’t help my feelings of solidarity and camaraderie.

The tension was tangible as we left class, not sure what to do or if we could go. We never think that things like this can happen to us in real life.  TV dramas, sure, but not Baltimore.  So many people, myself included, think of hospitals as being safe, almost sacred institutions where people go for healing and physical comfort, and for something like this to happen, it violates what we think, what we know, and what we think we know.

Tragically, one chapter of the story has ended, and the next chapter, one of healing, can now begin.  Despite what has happened, I feel safe and supported by my classmates, the SON faculty, and members of the security staff.  Hopkins is still a great place.