First Hospital Accompaniment

Today has been really draining.

I had my first hospital sexual assault accompaniment today.
Big words mean- I’m an advocate for victims of sexual assault. I am whatever type of support for a victim of sexual assault when they are having a forensic exam in the hospital.

Today was my first, and very memorable.

I’m rattled and shaken, and will always have her face and the face of her son imprinted on my brain. But I remained calm and in the moment with her, trying to be what she needed for me to be at that time and giving her resources and information for me to be anything else in the times ahead.

While I sat there in the hospital room across from her I couldn’t help but think that she and I would probably be friends in another situation. But the situation that she was in, the job that I’m in, automatically put me in a position to advocate for her. I was fairly uncomfortable for a while, realizing that if I was in the bed with a gown draped around my shocked and shaken body, with all of these people around me trying to do the best at their jobs, I would just feel like they thought they were better than me, so ashamed, so numb. Many survivors do feel this way, they blame themselves, they claim they deserved it, they feel like its something within them that caused this to happen.

It was hard watching the nurse rush around her trying to gather all bits of evidence for forensics to charge against her partner. It was uncomfortable to watch the victim advocate from law enforcement pull out all of her testimony about the occurrence that had taken place not 24 hours earlier. I watched my fellow advocate that I was shadowing, give her a net of support through different options and agencies that could offer her help during the days to come. All of these people were doing wonderful things, but I felt uncomfortable because I felt that something was missing, someone to be there to just empathize with her, to talk to her like she’s a person, not a patient, a victim or a survivor.

I wanted to just reach out to her and hold her hand. Talk to her about her life, ask her what she likes to do in her spare time. I wanted to build a friendship with her, because the lack of family and friends there supporting her. I wanted to know that when she walked out the hospital door that she was going to be okay. I guess that’s why I feel so conflicted with being a ‘professional’ in crisis situations. I know that by remaining professional, there will be some distance, and in distance comes the ability to separate yourself at the end of the day from the trauma that you have been a part of, but also it sometimes keeps us so far from what the survivor might need us to be.

I know I’m assuming that she wanted a friend, that she wanted someone to be her family, the professional distance might have been protection for her. This is my bleeding heart spilling out, knowing what’s best for all victims… yeah right. This is going to take some getting used to, hiding my bleeding heart.