I’ve written before about the myriad of sounds in the ICU environment. That post mostly dealt with IV pumps beeping, ventilators alarming, and constant talking. But there is one sound that will always rise above the cacophony: the soul-deep sob of someone who has just gotten the worst news of their entire lives.

The average office worker, barista, pilot or librarian may never hear that sound their whole life. Even for a nurse who works in a critical care area, I would say it’s fairly infrequent. Most people take devastating news rather well in public. Some people are so shocked that no sound could come out even if they wanted to cry.

You may think you’ve heard it on TV shows or seen it in a movie. But not even the best actor in the world could accurately capture it well enough to shake the dark recesses of your psyche when you hear it just a few feet away.

There is not one other sound that I can think of that would put such a halt to a busy nursing station. Hearing “code blue” overhead would momentarily reset us into action. Hearing the fire alarm barely fazes us anymore. Some crazy person running through the unit screaming would startle us, but we’d immediately get over it and take care of the situation.

But when we hear the muffled cries of someone who is trying to escape the unit, we never know if they’re going to make it to solitude. Sometimes they don’t. People have literally fallen into a heap on the hallway floor mid-step when their bodies just can’t hold the horror in another second.

It sends a chill down every single one of us and we are momentarily paralyzed by it. Humans (in America at least) are usually very guarded with our emotions. We don’t want to be vulnerable in front of a bunch of people we don’t know. So when we hear such a raw and primitive sound coming from another person, a stranger, it resonates very deeply. The sound is like a tangible thread that darts out to everyone within earshot and for an instant ties us all together.

One or two of us will break out of our paralysis to go to the person, but the rest of us are stunned into silence. What do we do? Do we stand there gaping at them, or do we turn back to our charting, our conversations? It’s disrespectful to gawk but then again, it’s disrespectful to go on as though someone isn’t falling apart 3 feet away from us.

If my coworkers are anything like me, it put them into sort of a daze for the rest of the day, too.