Nurses I Have Known

With all the time I've spent at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center over the past 11 days, I've been noticing all those nurses, how hard they work, how wonderful they are. They lift not only Dad's spirits [and his bed], but my spirits, too. I love what they wear--the pale pink pants, pastel Crocs, trim maroon separates, the watches and rings, the dazzling cut gemstone earrings their husbands gave them [I know because I asked]. I like their hair--the bouncy, roller-set curls and simple blonde ponytails. I search for style wherever I can find it, and they don't disappoint.

Nurses I've Known

1. Mrs. Komlo, my next-door neighbor during childhood--back when it was still white caps and uniforms, and those snow-colored, soft-soled shoes.
2. Maggie [at my dentist's office, near the monument], again with the white cap and dress. Maggie was very generously proportioned, and very generous with her smiles. She made my dreaded trips to that nightmare chair much more bearable. I don't think I could have summoned up the courage to see Dr. Cohen without her. I was truly terrified, and a terrible patient, too.
3. The gray-haired nurse at Dumont High School, who tested us for scoliosis and taught us about nutrition, and also wore a starched cap and uniform. I forget her name, but when I look back, she reminds me of someone who could have been a character in Peyton Place. She had the power to be judgmental, I fear.
4. Friends Debbie, Tish, Roey and my cousins, Annie [from the Irish side] and Judi [from the Italian side] and H.'s cousin, Mary Jane. I am officially in awe of you.
5. Vera, the wonderful, wonderful nurse in the office of Dr. Zachary Bloomgarden in NYC, the leading endocrinologist who has been treating H.'s diabetes for over 20 years. H. and I love Vera, and Dr. B. Once, Vera showed me how to inject a syringe into an orange, because I confided that I was nervous about ever having to give H. an injection of insulin. [I never have, but I have had to give him just the opposite--juice when he almost passed out from a low blood sugar, more times than I like to remember.]
6. Patricia [actually, a nurse practitioner], my calm, kind next-door neighbor for years in Montclair, who taught me how to take Baby Fig's rectal temperature--and shared her mother's rice pudding recipe and many other good things.
7. Ms. Otsky, the nurse at Bradford School. Poor little Fig got frequent stomachaches during her year with an unfriendly first-grade teacher. Ms. Otsky [a sweet mom herself] provided refuge and, I think, Tylenol sometimes.
8. Lee Quarfoot--my colleague at Good Housekeeping Magazine! For years and years, she was fiction editor, and last she told me, she was studying to be a nurse in a post-50 career change. How brave, how big thinking. First she was saving stories, then she would save lives. I have to connect with Lee again.

Nurses Now
Thank you, thank you, to Lauren, Diana and all of the other nurses on the third floor who have been so good to Dad. I have such admiration for you and the work you do. It makes a profession like mine--writing--seem insignificant. I work with words. My fingertips bounce over the black keyboard to form sentences, paragraphs, stories.

I don't slip surgical gloves on umpteen times a day and face urine, blood, vomit and sweat. I don't apply ointments and powders to rashes. I don't take stool samples, or look for good veins to insert IVs. I don't inject painkiller, monitor oxygen tubes, spoon-feed meds in applesauce, treat bed sores, lift and roll patients or, God forbid for everyone involved, bathe them.

I don't call a grumpy old man buddy or honey, or John, or Mr. John, or sir--anything to make him smile and forget his pain, to bring out his sweet side. I don't look into his eyes, far beyond the cotton robe, to see the picture of health, what his life still can be and will be. I don't understand those parameters. I don't pick up the phone next to the bed because a weak or ill person can't reach it, and I know it's a lifeline for him, so he shouldn't miss the call. I don't guard dignity, save lives, field panicked calls from family. I don't take doctors' orders, holding another human being's destiny quite carefully in my own two hands. 

But I, Alice, do rest easy because you do. And I will not take that for granted.

The photo above is from the 1968-1971 TV series "Julia"--another nurse I have known. Here's how imdb.com describes the plot: "Julia Baker is a young African-American woman working as a nurse. She is also a widow (her husband died in Vietnam) trying to raise a young son alone."