I was changing the sheets on an emergency room cot. It’s one of the only things they let me do during my emergency room clinical training as an EMT-Basic. I savored the experience — cleaning was a welcome break from standing around and waiting for a nurse to order me around.

But then a paramedic saw my EMT student uniform and gave me a heads up about a cardiac arrest that was en route to the emergency room. “Hey chief, there’s a code blue coming into Trauma Room 2, you should get in there!”

When I walked into Trauma Room 2, there were three doctors, two residents, three nurses and two emergency room technicians. We all stood around an empty bed, awaiting the arrival of the ambulance and the patient.

“You’re on compressions,” the leading doctor said to me. OK, I thought, no problem. I’m certified for this — 100 compressions per minute. Just sing “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees in your head, and compress at the rate that Barry Gibb sings, “Ah, ha, ha, ha....” Let your training take over.

The doctors were talking among themselves, something about “the eight ball.” One of the techs was trying to make idle conversation with me. I wasn’t listening to her.

When the paramedics brought the patient into the room, the first thing I noticed was the smell of vomit. It was caked in his hair, around his neck, down his chest. He looked like Paul Bunyan with his heavy work boots, jeans and a plaid, flannel shirt. His brown hair was a thick, curly mop.

Suddenly I was standing above him, my hands between his nipples. I thrust the bottom of my left palm straight into his heart 100 times per minute. It wasn’t like it was on the training mannequin. The mannequin didn’t come with a breakable ribcage. “Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.”

This time, though, John Travolta wasn’t busting a move and there was no stayin’ alive. There was only a 20-year-old college kid artificially pumping a stopped heart in vain.

What they don’t tell you in the movies is that CPR works about five percent of the time — on a good day — when you begin immediately after the heart stops. This man had collapsed 30 minutes prior to me beginning compressions.

I tried to focus on what the doctors were doing — after all, I want to be an ER doctor one day. There was movement all around me as doctors shouted at each other, looked at ultrasound monitors, started IV’s, checked pupil reactivity and filled big needles with medicine. I was at the center of this chaos, essentially pumping this man’s defective heart for him so that he wouldn’t be brain-dead from oxygen deprivation if the doctors were somehow able to restart his heart.

“Charging... CLEAR THE PATIENT!” I heard.

The patient’s body jumped six inches into the air as electricity coursed through his heart in an attempt to restore some sort of cardiac rhythm. It didn’t work, and I started the compressions again. His eyes were vacant, glassy. I couldn’t understand anything the doctors were saying, even though I wanted to.

He was officially declared dead. I’m sorry, Paul Bunyan.

“Good compressions,” a resident said to me.

“Yeah, great compressions. Damn, did you feel his spine?” the main doctor said.

A nurse joked, “Hey, Eric, need some new shoes? This guy’s boots are nice.”

The paramedic who had brought the guy in needed a signature so he could return to his ambulance, “I don’t think this patient can sign at the moment,” he said.

Their morbid sense of humor surprised me, but I understood that it was a way for them to cope with such an intense job. This was the first time I had seen a person die.

I tried to act like I wasn’t bothered by the situation. I want to be an ER doctor one day, and this was just a standard cardiac arrest, right? I washed and scrubbed my shaking hands and arms up to the elbow, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the dead body on the bed behind me.

I thought to myself, what if we had saved him? What if, just like in the movies, the EKG machine started beep-beep-beeping with a viable heartbeat right after we defibrillated him?

Then, suddenly, the pieces snapped together. I realized that I wasn’t upset and terrified because I couldn’t handle such a serious, frightening situation. I was upset because, for the first time in my young life, I was part of saving someone’s life — and we failed. This terrified me, but it also legitimized my work as a pre-med student.

I don’t enjoy preparing for the MCAT or studying when my friends aren’t. Medical school is a four-year gauntlet of stress and debt. I’ve been told a dozen times, “If you’re considering any career path other than medicine, do that.”

And yet I’ve never been more willing to dedicate myself to being a physician. I would have the skills and knowledge to be in charge of an emergency situation. I’m not naïve enough to expect to save everyone, but if failing feels this abysmal, then saving a life must be extraordinary.