The Date

It was a first date peppered with those strange little questions to fill the silence. It already was not going well.

“So,” he asks, “what’s it like to be a nurse?”

‘What’s it like?’ I think.
‘It is first thing in the morning a drive-by glance of your two patients telling you that, one will need more attention, more support, more everything. It is clear that this patient is flirting with the white light and it is your job to keep him on this side. It is overwhelming guilt for the other patient getting less of you It is the burden of knowing that the information you relay to the rest of the team can and will define the course of this patient’s treatment. It is a couple of minutes to give a stack of medicines to a life so vulnerable. You do this with the awareness that it takes a fraction of a second to make a fatal mistake. It is having that amount of power with an equal amount of self-doubt. At changing volumes through the shift, your internal monologue asks (screams, whispers) “What am I missing?” It is loving your coworkers with fierce loyalty. We’ve seen it too many times; usually, the first step in a hospital is to “blame the nurse.” It is no sleep the night before work because there is no mute for the midnight narrative “What will I face? What if I miss something? What if I cannot make the docs listen?” It is turning your patient during CPR, disconnecting the bag, watching as a liter of fluid pours out, and knowing that that fluid from his lungs is effectively drowning him. It’s continuing CPR for two hours on that man before his family understands he is not coming back. It is feeling the most profound sympathy for them, but also some resentment. They are making me continue this; they are making me torture this lifeless body. It is leaving the hospital after hours bone tired, dead on your feet, and in ten short hours, you will be back in these doors. It is quiet tears on the drive home for several reasons. A man died on your watch; you shed tears for him and his family. You also cry for yourself and the fact that you have to do it again tomorrow.’

The question lingers “What’s it like to be a nurse?" I decide to give my standard answer "It’s good, never boring. I work with amazing people.”

We talk some more about our families and colleges. He asks what I did for Christmas. I answered with a smile “Work; I did not want my coworkers with young k**s stuck at the hospital. They needed the day off more than I did.”

His reply was shock mixed with arrogance and judgment. “I would never work the holiday.”

I had to bite my tongue to keep from providing the litany of reasons he was wrong. “People do not stop dying on Christmas, and I believe helping another person is just about the most relevant thing one can do on Christmas. What did you do? Open socks from Santa?” I did not say it. Instead, I changed the subject.

There was no second date.