ECT Arrest

Jack was twenty‑two when he arrived at the hospital for what was meant to be a controlled, carefully monitored ECT session. The room was calm, the team steady, the routine familiar. After the sedative took hold, Jack drifted into a quiet, heavy stillness while the nurses prepared the equipment. The first rounds of treatment began smoothly—brief flashes of light and sound in an otherwise hushed space.

But then something shifted.

His heart, once steady, began to slow. The monitor’s rhythm softened, then faltered, until the room was swallowed by a chilling silence. In an instant, the calm dissolved. A nurse stepped forward, calling his name, checking for a response that didn’t come. Jack had slipped into cardiac arrest.

The team moved fast. CPR began, hands working with urgency and precision, the room filling with the tense determination of people fighting to pull someone back from the edge. No one knew if Jack would return. The young man who had come in for a routine treatment now lay at the centre of a battle for his life, his future hanging in a fragile, breathless balance.