brevity of life

twas my second day back at the hospital.

day one was really dull. my boss didnt give me any patients so that i could "ease back into things". but none of the other nurses had a full load so no one needed my help and i spent the day looking for ways to look busy and bugging the nurses and doctors in the ER. i'm really good at it. the bugging part.

i saw dr. bushman, who looked at me and said "you're back. WHY????? Why did you come back???". thanks.

today i had my own patients. but there were only 3 of them and they did not keep me busy.
Dr. Chickenlegs came by in the morning as i was pouring meds and leaned over my shoulder and said "hello. why are you here?".

what is it with these south african male professionals? i'm here because i work here and if i'm not here, i dont get paid. way to make a girl feel welcomed.

so today was almost as uneventful as the first day. except we had an afternoon tea party with a nice pot of orange pekoe and strawberry shortcake.
it was a jolly good time.
near the end, i went down to answer a call from one of my patients. i stopped at the ladies' room on the way back & when i got to the nursing desk, there was no one there.
where did everyone else go?

we have these new personal verbal communicators. they're like the twenty-first century version of the communicators from star trek. now we no longer have to yell down the hall or use the overhead hospital-wide paging system to get help or find another staff member.
so a trauma came in and the ER nurse was alone because her partner had gone on an ambulance transfer with a sick toddler to another town and so she called for backup from all staff. only it was over the communicators and i dont have one yet because i'm "not in the system" so they all ran to save the day and i came back and had to man the ward as its never supposed to be left without a nurse.

this changed the entire atmosphere of the hospital.
we know Death.
Death came to our ward last night. but we had expected it.
today, Death just drove on in unannounced. there were no warning signs.
a blink.
a soul departed.

death is not just death.
yes, they are all sad. but some dont affect us in the same way (which is good or as nurses we'd snap pretty early in our careers). this one caught us unawares. this one invovled someone in my own age group. this one was difficult because we were not allowed to clean the body or make it more presentable in any way until the coroner came from the city to investigate as it was a sudden, traumatic event. and the coroner would not be arriving in a jiffy as he had to drive into town and see another case first. this meant that the person's loved ones saw them in a state that was so... altered... that internalizing it was overwhelming.
the challenge was accepting our inability to help.
we couldnt make the person healthy.
we couldnt comfort the family.
we were powerless.