Some Things Just Never Go Away....

It may have been precipitated by sharing war stories with Sylvia, in between plays, at our sons’ football game. I hadn’t seen her since she graduated, and it was interesting hearing her take on things, especially since she ended up on a cardiac floor, where I, too, spent my first year in nursing. It was amazing to hear how little had really changed in the last, twenty-plus, years.

She finds the work less than stimulating, and the politics, driven by a matriarchal dominated hierarchy, maddening. I suggested a change of venue, as it had taken me almost ten years to find my niche in maternal-child medicine. She countered, by sharing that she had told her husband she didn’t know how much longer she could help make ends meet by emptying bedpans, to the accompaniment of a whining baby-boomer showing no compassion for the octogenarian occupying the neighboring bed. Many of her patients are there for open-heart surgery, and she cares for them before, and after.

“The older ones are quiet and appreciative. It’s the younger ones; you know, the forty-year-olds, who whine all the time.”

“The kick is up,,,,, and, it’s good!”



As I listened, I envisioned the floor I had worked on, so long ago.

Most graduate nurses drew the night shift. The lighting was soft, and respectful, against rust carpeting that covered every available surface, in an effort to muffle the sound of crash carts rolling, and the inevitable herd of rubber soled feet running towards the door of a patient “in trouble”.

Our environment called for lowered, softly feminine voices, which I always imagined offered extra comfort to a predominantly male population.

The patient load has not changed. Like my friend Sylvia, I usually cared for four or five every night. But, I remember one, in particular.

He was young. I suppose Sylvia would have thought of him as a complainer. I remember him as large; large and dark, almost bear-like. I can’t remember his reason for being there, but I’ll never forget his presence.

Working nights, if you are lucky, you see your patients only twice; once at rounds, when you begin your shift, and next, as you turn your wards over to an older crew, who have earned the right to sleep at night.

I entered his room on the third night of his stay. He lay, as always, hulking, and wide-awake, on a bed made tiny by his mass. As I padded inside, he turned; reaching for the chair his wife must have occupied only hours ago.

“Hey…” Gravel garbled his unused voice, as I rounded the opposite side of the bed.



I stopped, and bent forward to find his brown-bearded face in the swath of light provided by the door, left ajar for this purpose.

“Yes?”, I whispered.

“Take this.”, he offered.

Laboriously, he maneuvered his bulk in my direction. I struggled to make out a mass of fabric swinging from his outstretched hand. Taking it without speaking, I moved towards the door, and light.

Folds of Carolina-blue knit fell about my hands, as I struggled to shape the mass into a form I could recognize. Not until I saw the tiny, green, alligator emblem, did I understand what I held.

I turned, startled, away from the light to face him sitting amongst a web of tubes and wires.

“No!” My whisper was strident. “No, I couldn’t!” And, as I turned, my hands, without direction, began to fold the valued garment, reverently, in preparation for placement back in the chair. It was 1980, and Izod was king…

“But, you’re always so cold! I want you to have it!” The energy it took to whisper the words seemed to have sapped him, as he sunk back against the pillows, where his distended abdomen rose and fell, rapidly. One meaty hand rose to brush his curly, dark mane off his brow; and he sighed.

I stood in the cylinder of light for several seconds, feeling the expensive weight of the sweater in my hands, before I turned, and, observing his frustration, made the decision.

It was easily four sizes too big. Stretched to it’s full capacity, it encircled me, more than once. And I gave thanks, repeatedly, for ribbing on the end of the sleeves that kept the voluminous knit above my hands, and out of my way, as I entered data on patients that came after him.


Today, as I left the office, Don met me, circling cubicles in an effort to assure himself that all our computers were detached from the main-frame.

“You might want to check the ultrasound computer!”, I called as I turned the corner.

Realizing my blunder, I stopped, and turned to see him looking at me, quizzically.

“I guess some things just never go away!”, I said with a laugh and a wave, as I hefted my bags onto my shoulder, and headed for the door.


© Copyright 2007-2008 Stacye Carroll