“We cried together! I have tasted all the happiness the world can offer.”
Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera
In the ICU setting, critically-ill patients are intensely monitored by the watchful eye of the diligent and vigilant, read: slightly psychotic and ferocious, Critical-Care Nurse. Honestly I want to throat punch every office dweller who proclaims to know what it means to work well under pressure.
The Nurse knows people are clueless and don’t always know what the hell they’re talking about. The Nurse will chart this unawareness as lack of insight, keep smiling and patiently explain why I wish you cared about the things I wish you cared about.
Personally I am unafraid of the typical things people are afraid of. Things like guns, cars, sun exposure and/or love. No I developed these almost comical phobias of sunny days, walking up or down stairs, bridges and human beings. Over the 20 years I’ve worked as an ICU Nurse, I’ve seen a lot of happy endings play out, some meh mediocre ones, some satisfactory ones and the bad ones…
Let’s just say the bad endings sometimes cause me to lose several nights (weeks) worth of sleep, but I haven’t seen an ending like that in a while.
It’s been three years give or take, but I don’t count my numbered days out loud anymore since I know our days are always numbered.
Of course the happy ending is my favorite, I wish all of my patients could have a happy ending, but they simply do not. Grief wears many masks and I watch this grief process unfold with the surviving loved ones. I’m always a mother, haven’t figured out how to turn that off, so it’s the mothers I watch in silent agony.
Time after time I absorb these miniature grief shocks and let the raw emotion run through me and basically it’s like gripping a high voltage live wire without being electrocuted. Trust me, it’s a gift. Sometimes at night, after a deluge of vicious storms have knocked out all of my own power, I walk through my front door and only need to hear one word,— Mom? This one word has the power to restore me and silence whatever my heart has wanted to scream all day. That’s a heavy burden to place on my children who are not responsible for my happiness, so I continue to hold my feelings until I can safely release them. Therefore I grumble a simple hello and let my children believe I’m a cranky bitch. Now that they’re much older, they recognize a certain mood and know it’s better not to know that sometimes people murder their own children in the most heinous ways.
Eventually I found positive ways to redistribute these sometimes unpleasant side effects of my job back into the world and tada, it’s now my own unique version of love. I rarely hug my children after work, always used to think I didn’t want to contaminate them with the germs I undoubtedly bring home from any shift. Truth be told, I fear I will dissolve like some Wicked Witch, if I even try to hug my own children after work.
Once every year or so, I’ll scream in my car on the way home, never feel it coming though until the sound is escaping my mouth. Other days the swiftness in which I rebound and my ability to laugh at all, strikes me as so disgusting that I wonder if I still have a soul.
Of course I know this isn’t healthy, I’m a nurse for Christ’s sake. Sometimes we joke about all of this at the nurses station, never combine the letters P-T-S-D together out loud, the same way we don’t speak the word q-u-i-e-t. The powers that be like to say Registered Nurses suffer from alarm fatigue, caregiver burnout or moral distress and dilemma, even though we’re not supposed to say anyone suffers from anything anymore.
No comment.
Of course I make it look easy, like some damned Maybelline cover girl, but it’s not. My mother always reminds me I have this gift to do what I do, and I would never trade any gift I was given, even an ugly one. There’s something about working directly in this life or death environment that alters a person, turns a silly girl into a real woman. People seem to forget that each and every single moment of our lives is fleeting, there are no guarantees whatsoever, and any peace we hold is fragile. Our lives can simply be over in seconds, our tempered shields of glass shattered with enough brute force.
This only makes me feel a thrill with the start of each new season and I do love the rain far more than I love the sun. I remember not to get too attached to the sun, know I always miss it when it’s gone, and it never feels as good on me if I get to feel it every day. Perhaps this is sad or perhaps not, but I feel this same way about the men I’ve spent my days and nights with. Change is our one constant life variable, it’s always inevitable. If we are lucky to survive the twists of fate and hands of time, growth is always an option for us all.
Ultimately this job makes me love life and appreciate this ability to dance along the full spectrum of human emotion. One of my favorite phases was early motherhood and with it came the revival of all my childhood wonders. For the first decade or so, I wondered in an angry sort of way, when an ice cream cone lost the ability to solve all of my problems.
These days I find myself tiptoeing through the seventh life stage of development, all Generativity vs. Stagnation, thanks to Erikson. The task being to create and nurture all the parts of myself that will hopefully outlive me. At home, I can be so playful and young at heart, but apparently you have to truly grow up when your children hit adulthood. Death and the dying process happen to be my professional passion projects, so I openly discuss this topic with my children. It’s macabre, but to me death is reality, not some far away battle to fight and conquer. I doubt I would buy a t-shirt with a warrior ribbon on it and that’s just me. Surely I’d throw myself in front of a train for all three of my children, but I feel no need to verbalize this the way my own mother always did. I hate the phrase I’d die for you, almost as much as I hate to hear people emphatically state they are starving.
The Nurse knows you just feel very hungry.
A few years back, my daughters and I went into the city to see Phantom of the Opera on one of it’s final curtain calls. When I say the city, I mean only the Big Apple. One of Alexandra’s college friends joined us over Thanksgiving break, unable to return home to LA twice within a one month time span. We tease our LA Baby about the first time she walked her East Coast college campus after dark, encountered a deer and was so frightened that she placed a distress call for help. My daughter laughed only a little and told her friend there was nothing to fear because surprise girl, the buck is actually afraid of you.
The day after Thanksgiving we, along with LA Baby, hopped on the train to take in this closing show. I’ve found it’s best to immediately surrender to ride along with whoever The Universe has trapped me with on a northbound train headed to New York City, and well the possibilities are just endless. I don’t recommend riding during Comic Con if you are the jumpy sort. The train air is always stale, the ride always bumpy, and the final portion is—kill me please, it’s underwater. Going through the long dark tunnel mentally prepares me to emerge from my small city cocoon and step onto the island of Manhattan. Now I am ready for the light to blind me for a second, even on an overcast day.
Frankly it’s the lesser of two evils. I’d swim across the Hudson before I ever drove my Audi into Manhattan and looked for parking.
We arrived at Penn Station and made our way through the crowd. Instinct takes over and my whole vibe shifts in response to the palpable rhythm of the city. My pulse remains a steady 70, but my shoulders stiffen before going up and down my back. Must always remember to look relaxed or be targeted, and I slip my wallet phone into the front pocket of my jeans. My steps match or surpass the pace of the crowd while my eyes casually scan faces for every potential threat, and here are more fun job hazards on display.
It’s funny I’ve been doing this since I was 13 years old and NYC was frightening even by NYC standards back in the 1980’s when I was an early teenager. Even though my girls are full grown and have been doing this for years without me, they still follow my cues like compliant little ducklings. If they don’t follow my rules, they know there will be hell to pay and I only need to throw one sharp glance in their direction to rectify this perceived wrong. I have no idea what they do when I’m not there and I don’t even think about it.
Next we descend up the staircase which always smells like pretzels and urine mixed together with the filth of the train station. Now get ready for all five senses to be further assaulted at once. The horns blare and some still yellow cabs whirl by, always blasting Jay-Z, which is completely on purpose and to the delight of all the country bumpkin tourists.
In New York, New York, no one ever looks at your face or says hello. I love it for all it’s beautiful grit and no one gives a damn if you smoke anything at all.
I always take it all in, take a deep breath and think, God I fucking love the city.
Events would unfold on this one day and would surprise even me, the most wicked of the jaded and scorned.
To Be Continued…
You are the real deal my dear ! Your ability to be able to deal with the worst of circumstances to appreciate the positive outcomes is beyond commendable. I am amazed at the thickness of the Teflon on your outer shell. Being able to tell the kids about death is a release, I’m sure, for you and, quite frankly a reality check for them. And to put it all aside and just live life so normal is incredibly amazing. I am sure there is a level of PTSD under that solid exterior. I mean you’re human. Having lived through it a couple of times, it’s not always as prominent as one might believe.
Seriously, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, you’re a remarkable human being and the world needs more like you. You’ve been blessed with a special personality not too many have. But pleas, do me a favor - no jumping in front of trains !!
Amazing writing piece and reality piece! My own Mother was an R.N. and I know what burdens she bore, quietly ( back in my Boomer childhood). She died overnight when I was 13. I also met a wonderful cadre of Nurses back in Sept. 2021, when I was treated in ER and for two days, for a bleeding duodenal ulcer. All the Nursing staff that helped me were kind, as gentle as they could be and WARRIORS to the core. Eyes and ears for the Dr and huge helpers for me, a scared older lady who did not want to be there...but cooperated with them, as I knew they were there to help me survive. God bless you for your labor of love!