Medically Speaking

Chapter 5

Almost as soon as I left Brandon's room, my morning dissolved into chaos. There are patients that you get more attached to than others and Bailey was one of mine. Fifteen years old, sweet as pie, and being raised by one very tired single parent. Nurses have a habit of bonding more with our kiddos that are left alone for whatever reason, but it always strikes closer to home for me. Always brings up memories that I wish I could bury in my past, reminds me of April. And Bailey reminds me more of April than any patient I've had over the past year.

I'm just as close to her mom, who wakes up at 5 AM every day to make the two hour drive to work just to make the two hour drive back at the end of the day. Due to Bailey's complex medical history, she's in and out of the hospital fairly regularly so I always do my best to make things as easy for her mom as I can and sit with Bailey when she needs someone to hold her hand and her mom can't be there.

But I'm never going to replace her mom. No nurse is. And when she started declining, I did my best to hold her hand, to try and soothe the fear in her eyes in her lucid moments between my trips out into the hallway to communicate with her doctors and call her mom to give her updates as she rushed back to the hospital. I helped, but I wasn't mom.

Kidney failure was the best guess for what was happening, although her doctors are waiting on all of her labs coming back to make an official judgment. She's been on the road to a kidney transplant for several years now, but in the face of it, it's a scary place to be. Ultimately, the doctors decided to move her to the intensive care unit. Her mom made it in at the last minute to catch the doctors and ask questions.

I'd ended up holding her while she cried out her fears and frustrations with the hand life had dealt her and her daughter. My heart having to go to that familiar place where I recognize the emotions writhing in my soul, acknowledge them for the reality that they are, but shove them into the background where I don't feel them. Where I don't let them touch the surface because my strength is my best attribute.

Some patients and their families need you to cry with them. Need to see that you care for their kid as much as they do, but some parents--like Bailey's mom--need to borrow your strength because their tank is empty. They need that trade off, that moment to be weak while someone else holds them up.

And once they were gone, I had to take a deep breath and dive back into caring for my other patients.

When I finally got the chance to sit down, my head immediately hit the desk. "Are you alive?" Danny asked from behind me. I turned my head to the side as he grabbed a file of paperwork off the table and started back around the hallway.

"If I say no, will you give me the rest of the day off?"

"No."

Groaning, I sit up straighter and consider hiding again when I see Jett headed down the hall towards me. "If you're coming to tell me how much money just went down the drain fixing my car, please leave."

"Freeloader," he retorts, leaning over the desk to hand me my keys back. "They did the diagnostic for free and changed your oil for you. The only thing you have to pay for is the repair on the engine." He waved his hand in a vague rendering of imitation. "Something about something being broken."

I stare at him blankly. "How do you still have a job?"

He gave me his award-winning smile. "Because you're not paying me, sugar cube. I don't have to remember all the sordid details." He handed me a packet detailing all they had done and the pricing. "North said to give you this. He was, uh... more intense about it than usual. Said something about explaining the repairs to you later? Is that who your date is with tonight?"