Fairy Dust

Some of the most significant people in my life have been named Nancy. I've added another one to the list. Our nurse last night was a Nancy, and the first thing I learned from her is that even though I may think I don't judge people by the way they look, I do. We all do.

When I first saw her I thought, Uh oh, she's a go-by-the-rules person and isn't going to let me stay here tonight. I mentally prepared for a fight because I wasn't leaving. Tears burned my eyes as I had mental images of standing outside the hospital in the rain, in the dark, banging on the door to get back in.

Nurse Nancy is tall, close to 6', with gray hair that hung neatly to her waist. She wore a laminated card on a chain around her neck that had all sorts of angels and cherubs and crosses and saints pinned to it. Nurse Nancy had that look of being in charge. Not a Nurse Ratchett, but like the type of Grandma who might raise an eyebrow at you if you misbehaved at her house. That eyebrow raising would live in your nightmares for weeks. Nurse Nancy had that kind of imposing look. So I scrunched myself down in my chair as far as I could and waited.

Boy was I wrong. She came in and introduced herself. Oh, I'm Nanci, too, I said. She didn't look up but said she was sure that meant we would get along just fine. My shoulders settled a teeny bit.

Nurse Nancy took a quick look around the room and got to work. Other nurses had left dirty sheets on the floor under the sink (I usually would have picked them up myself, but I'd missed that set), they had extra supplies thrown into buckets and bins that were stacked in random places, the table next to Parker's bed had three pair of scissors, four rolls of facial tape, left over caps, cups, lime green lollipop sponges and other assorted goodies I hadn't known what to do with. Within 15 minutes the place was immaculate. Nurse Nancy cleaned the room like I imagined she cleaned her kitchen at home: a place for everything, everything in its place.

Once that was done I swear I think she started to sprinkle fairy dust all around.

Are you staying here tonight? she asked. I straightened my shoulders.

Yes. I was ready for the fight.

Well, if there is anything I can do to make you more comfortable, please let me know.

Not what I expected, but suddenly there was something. I explained how we hadn't slept in days and nights because of all the interruptions, all the discomfort, all the noise. Within minutes, Nurse Nancy had set the machines to only beep on her beeper, not in the room. She had taken all the wires and tubes attached to Parker, neatly lay the excess in a towel and rolled it up like a tortilla, pinning it to the bed out of his way. She took the blood pressure cuff off his arm and turned it off so it wouldn't fill on its own with air every hour on the hour (so I had to go find the nurses and tell them to please come turn it off). She readjusted the position of his bed and he sighed in relief. She brought him a blanket that had been warmed in a machine and lay it over his body. She did this, she did that, and in the middle of it all a calm settled over the room. When she was done, she found a penny on the floor and placed it on the rail above his bed.

Must be a lucky penny, I'll put it right here to watch over him, she said.

I have four lucky pennies on the shelf in the window to watch over him, too.

The only unpleasant thing that happened was that Nurse Nancy had to plug the NG tube back into the suction machine because Parker had too much stuff building up in his stomach, meaning it still isn't draining properly.

But the good news is that, rather than being woken up every twenty minutes or so, I slept for two hours at a time, and Parker, I think, slept through a whole lot more than I did. Every time I woke up I looked at the clock and pinched myself. I felt so lucky.

Nurse Nancy is coming back tonight. I asked if we could request her. She said she would take care of it, and she smiled before she left.

James told me on the phone this morning that every tree is blooming around my cottage, the road is lined with daffodils and cherry blossoms, and the big giant tree outside my big, giant window is so loaded with blooms the limbs groan under the weight. Okay, so he didn't say it quite like that, but you get the idea. I miss my little cottage, but there is no where else I would be at this moment that by Parker's side.

Today's nurse, Joanna, just told me Parker's blood pressure is high again and she is giving him an IV drug to lower it. I hope it doesn't keep us from the CT scan tomorrow. But I also hope if we do go for the CT scan the people who move him have access to the heart drugs in an emergency.

Footnote: Now I know for sure that Nurse Nancy is a fairy. I had an email this morning ~ AN AGENT FROM NEW YORK WANTS TO SEE MY MANUSCRIPT!!!