This is about my worst scenario, and, yeah, it happened a couple times.
Working small-town Florida I got to know lots of the locals, and, over time become a regular part of their lives through transporting them or dealing with them in the ERs where I also worked.
Amongst the suicidal were those who made repeated attempts, and kept getting close, but, due to a minor technical screw-up, don't quite get there. They so much wanted to die, and knowing some of their histories, I didn't blame them, (and, yes, part of me, after a few rounds of this, wanted to help, too!).
Still, even in their sickness, some of them were so alive and vital (and so many of them superb physical specimens, too!), and...well, funny! that you had to love them for the incredibly twisted human beings they were. Eventually, most of them succeeded.
And then, there were the critical calls where I had used up my bag of tricks and the patient entered into a few moments of a perfect combination of consciousness, lucidity and freedom from pain (i.e. spinal) to be able to communicate so I couldn't miss the message. All I was left with in those experiences was an excruciatingly brief interval of time with a human being who desperately wanted to live, and I knew they would not, and, before my time with them was over, they were dead.
When a "run" of the former crashed into a scene like the latter, I was the one that got splattered.
