He Breathed After Being Pronounced Dead

I watched my attending pronounce a patient dead who was very much alive. Room three.

Cardiac arrest. We worked him for forty minutes. Attending called it.

I started filling out paperwork when I saw his chest move. Not a twitch.

A breath. I froze. Do I scream? Do I question a doctor with twenty

years on me? His monitor was flat but his lungs were filling. I grabbed the crash

cart. My attending turned white. Turns out he had disconnected the

leads early to move faster to another code. The patient survived. But that moment

taught me something terrifying. We're all just humans pretending we have answers.