parking lot would be an upgrade.
The lights were already dimmed when I arrived, which muted the bright colors on the walls. Smiling yellow suns appeared menacing and gray above little villages where bowed farmer-people tended fields. A human-sized teddy bear occupied the wall in front of the nurse’s station. I was sure in daylight he looked friendly, but right now he looked like he hoped the charge nurse was hiding a steak.
One of the things I was glad about on Y4 was that we dressed out from the locker room’s supply of green OR scrubs—that way I didn’t have to wear dumb ones with smiling cartoon cats. The Pedi ICU’s charge nurse’s scrubs had winking Betty Boops holding out oversized bandages and lollipops. They looked sarcastic. I almost approved.
“I’m your float from the Nursing Office,” I told her, and gave a short wave. She looked me up and down slowly, and her left eyebrow rose. I was wearing an old pair of OR scrubs brought from home, freshly washed, but not wrinkle-free, and my ponytail was of dubious quality. I could see her doing the math of letting me, a potential ingrate, nurse some of the children in her care. If you thought plain intensive care unit nurses were overprotective and judgmental—which I frequently did—you hadn’t met a pediatrics intensive care nurse yet.
I tried to give off my best “I won’t kill anyone tonight, honest” vibe, and waited for her to come to her assignment decision.
“You’re in sixty-two and sixty-three. Call if you need help.”
I walked away confident that I, as a float nurse, had been given the easiest assignment on the floor. I’d probably have two kids with broken legs, or a dehydrated baby. I found my set of rooms at the very end of the hall near the fire escape stairs.
The curtains were closed, and I could hear speaking in a foreign tongue. The charge nurse hadn’t mentioned relatives. Pediatric patient parents were the worst, either hovering or incompetently neglectful. “Is that German?” I asked aloud.
“Night shift?” came the response. “Come help.”
I sniffed the air. Closed curtains were rarely a good sign. It smelled sweet—
“Hello?” asked the outgoing nurse.
“Tying my shoe—sorry!” I lied, and ducked inside.
The patient was a boy who looked about twelve, with a ventilator connected to a tracheotomy tube in his neck. His whole body was flaccid, and his head was tilted to one side. The nurse had a plastic tub full of water balanced on the bed, bathing him. She handed me a dry washcloth. “Glove up.”
I sniffed the air again. “Strawberry?”
“Ensure. He gets 45 ccs an hour. But I didn’t connect his peg tube right, and I pulled the covers up and—” she said, and I saw the problem. For some reason this kid had a tube from his stomach to the outside world, and she’d set the feeding pump on when the tube was disconnected. Instead of going into him, the Ensure’d spilled all over him, as pink as the painted walls above his bed. But why didn’t the kid say anything?
“Shawn was in a motor vehicle accident four years ago. He’s a C3 quad now.”
“Ooooooh.” C3 meant a neck fracture, high. “And now?”
“Recovering from autonomic dysreflexia. He’s in the clear, we’re just watching him one more day is all.”
I nodded to head off any extra questions. She went through the rest of her report, while we finished the bath. All his monitors were on and all of the parameters were currently normal. I wrote things down at the appropriate times, and she seemed confident she was passing Shawn over to a competent nurse, one who hadn’t gotten a patient killed on the last active shift she’d had.
There were family provisions stocked up on the shelf near the windows, Doritos, Diet Cokes. The German continued from a small CD player set up with speakers by the table at the head of the bed. It made everything we were doing sound more dramatic than it was, like I was about to Nurse in Space, or in a
The lights were already dimmed when I arrived, which muted the bright colors on the walls. Smiling yellow suns appeared menacing and gray above little villages where bowed farmer-people tended fields. A human-sized teddy bear occupied the wall in front of the nurse’s station. I was sure in daylight he looked friendly, but right now he looked like he hoped the charge nurse was hiding a steak.
One of the things I was glad about on Y4 was that we dressed out from the locker room’s supply of green OR scrubs—that way I didn’t have to wear dumb ones with smiling cartoon cats. The Pedi ICU’s charge nurse’s scrubs had winking Betty Boops holding out oversized bandages and lollipops. They looked sarcastic. I almost approved.
“I’m your float from the Nursing Office,” I told her, and gave a short wave. She looked me up and down slowly, and her left eyebrow rose. I was wearing an old pair of OR scrubs brought from home, freshly washed, but not wrinkle-free, and my ponytail was of dubious quality. I could see her doing the math of letting me, a potential ingrate, nurse some of the children in her care. If you thought plain intensive care unit nurses were overprotective and judgmental—which I frequently did—you hadn’t met a pediatrics intensive care nurse yet.
I tried to give off my best “I won’t kill anyone tonight, honest” vibe, and waited for her to come to her assignment decision.
“You’re in sixty-two and sixty-three. Call if you need help.”
I walked away confident that I, as a float nurse, had been given the easiest assignment on the floor. I’d probably have two kids with broken legs, or a dehydrated baby. I found my set of rooms at the very end of the hall near the fire escape stairs.
The curtains were closed, and I could hear speaking in a foreign tongue. The charge nurse hadn’t mentioned relatives. Pediatric patient parents were the worst, either hovering or incompetently neglectful. “Is that German?” I asked aloud.
“Night shift?” came the response. “Come help.”
I sniffed the air. Closed curtains were rarely a good sign. It smelled sweet—
“Hello?” asked the outgoing nurse.
“Tying my shoe—sorry!” I lied, and ducked inside.
The patient was a boy who looked about twelve, with a ventilator connected to a tracheotomy tube in his neck. His whole body was flaccid, and his head was tilted to one side. The nurse had a plastic tub full of water balanced on the bed, bathing him. She handed me a dry washcloth. “Glove up.”
I sniffed the air again. “Strawberry?”
“Ensure. He gets 45 ccs an hour. But I didn’t connect his peg tube right, and I pulled the covers up and—” she said, and I saw the problem. For some reason this kid had a tube from his stomach to the outside world, and she’d set the feeding pump on when the tube was disconnected. Instead of going into him, the Ensure’d spilled all over him, as pink as the painted walls above his bed. But why didn’t the kid say anything?
“Shawn was in a motor vehicle accident four years ago. He’s a C3 quad now.”
“Ooooooh.” C3 meant a neck fracture, high. “And now?”
“Recovering from autonomic dysreflexia. He’s in the clear, we’re just watching him one more day is all.”
I nodded to head off any extra questions. She went through the rest of her report, while we finished the bath. All his monitors were on and all of the parameters were currently normal. I wrote things down at the appropriate times, and she seemed confident she was passing Shawn over to a competent nurse, one who hadn’t gotten a patient killed on the last active shift she’d had.
There were family provisions stocked up on the shelf near the windows, Doritos, Diet Cokes. The German continued from a small CD player set up with speakers by the table at the head of the bed. It made everything we were doing sound more dramatic than it was, like I was about to Nurse in Space, or in a
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