by Tilda Shalof
“Thanks, I’m good.”
“Are you sure you don’t have diarrhea?”
“No, I don’t.” He looked so embarrassed. I cringed for him.
“Okay, Mitchell. I’ll leave you alone.”
When I came back later, he seemed to have fallen asleep but his stomach was still gurgling.
“Nurse Tilda?” he said softly.
“Yes, Mitchell. I thought you were sleeping.”
“You know what? I have diarrhea.”
“I thought so, sweetie.” I washed my hands, put on disposable gloves, gave him some Gatorade, turned his room into a gastroisolation ward, and prayed I wouldn’t get it too.
“Should I take medicine?”
“Not necessary. You’ll probably feel better in the morning.”
If he did, I’d tell him the joke a camper had told me the other day.
“Have you seen the movie called Constipation?” he’d asked.
“No,” I’d answered, rolling my eyes at yet another scatological joke.
“That’s because it’s not out yet! How ’bout Diarrhea, have you seen that one?”
“Can’t say I have.”
“Oh, it’s all over town!”
I stayed close by Mitchell for the next few hours, not because I was worried, but because I was fond of him. In the morning, he felt much better, and waved to me at breakfast.
That day at lunch there was an announcement of a swim marathon for the older campers, counsellors, and staff. It would be one trip around the entire lake: three and a half kilometres. I wanted to do it. I went over to the sign-up sheet on the bulletin board and put my name down. I wasn’t fast, but I was strong and I felt fairly confident I could do it. I wanted two things only: to finish and not be last.
My son Harry and his counsellor were my spotters, following beside me in a canoe. “Go, Mom, go,” Harry said in his soft voice while the counsellor crooned in a beautiful, bluesy voice, “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” by Green Day, and “You’re Beautiful,” by James Blunt, and then in deference to my venerable age, every single verse of “American Pie.” I found those mellow songs surprisingly motivating for that slow, but steady swim. “You’re doing great,” he called out from time to time. “You’re going to make it.” I listened to them and tried to find the coach inside of me. An hour and a half later, at the finish line, when I finally hauled myself out of the water, there were still a few swimmers in the water behind me. My legs were wobbly, but I’d made it and I wasn’t last. We were all finding ways to triumph at camp.
I WAS HEADING INTO the home stretch. It was the first day of my fourth and last week of camp and as usual, the evening clinic was packed. There were kids coming at me from all directions, asking questions, and presenting me with their various aching body parts. That night there were the usual sore throats, blisters, splinters, earaches, itchy bug bites, two kids worried they had lice, and one with an ingrown toenail. Then I heard a soft moan and something in that sound that made me come running. Terry was carrying a little girl in his arms. It was Lucy, my sun safety poster child! “My leg hurts,” she said, holding on to her thigh.
“What happened?” I asked as Terry laid her gently on the bed.
“I fell off the swing,” she said calmly, “in the playground.”
“Did anyone see you fall?” I looked around.
“I was there.” Her counsellor squirmed and looked away, knowing she should have been supervising her kids more closely. “But I didn’t actually see it,” she admitted.
I examined Lucy’s leg. The skin was intact. There was no wound or bleeding, no bruising or swelling, and no difference in size between the two legs. The pulses in both legs were strong and easy to palpate and she had no difficulty wiggling her toes. I made baseline measurements to follow any changes. Only when I asked her to move her leg did she wince in pain. Her blood pressure was normal and her pulse slow and steady. Otherwise, she looked comfortable and refused pain medication. In the waiting room, the other kids clamoured and were getting impatient and demanding. Darren called out that he was getting the fizzy ginger-ale feeling in his head. Leslie, a counsellor, dropped by for her anti-depressant medication, and wanted to ask me a few questions, if I had a moment, but unfortunately I didn’t just then, could she come back later? A little boy from the Silver cabin had a sore ankle, but I only had time to call out to his counsellor, “RICE! Rest and Ice,” and toss him a tensor bandage, adding, “Compression and Elevation!”
I returned to Lucy. She was sitting up in bed, eating a bowl of Cheerios. Her leg looked completely normal, but she still couldn’t move it without wincing. I was worried. I thought of the long, dark, bumpy road to the hospital for something that might get better on its own. Could it wait until the morning? I was still far from clearing out the infirmary and I had to return the calls of dozens of parents who had been leaving messages. Some of them I dreaded calling. So many were upset or dissatisfied or suspicious. One angry father wanted to know why no one was looking after his kid’s rash he read about in a letter home. I had to return a call to Clare’s mother, who was not happy with the message I had left on her answering machine, in which I said that Clare was enjoying camp. “Well, she’d better be enjoying it with what it’s costing me, and her father doesn’t pay a cent,” was the mother’s return message. Then there was the father of a camper who was a surgeon I’ve known for years at the hospital where I work. When I told him that Zoë had come in with another headache yesterday, but was fine today, he told me to arrange for her to come home to Toronto for a CT scan of her head. He left a message that if I didn’t call him back by this evening, he would drive up there right away to examine his daughter himself. I figured these were the “helicopter parents” I had read about in a magazine at the dentist’s office. They were over-involved, controlling parents who micro-managed their children’s lives to ensure everything would go perfectly. They were constantly trying to pave the way for their children, keeping them safe or rescuing them. Very good, but how devastating if a child’s expectation was for everything to go perfectly and mosquito bites happen?
I cleared out the infirmary as soon as possible. An hour later, when I returned to Lucy, she was sleeping comfortably. I examined her leg again. I felt all around and she moaned softly when I touched it in one place, about mid-thigh. Otherwise, it looked perfectly normal.
“Are you sure you didn’t see anything?” I asked her counsellor, who was lounging in the bean bag chair beside the bed. “Did you hear a sound, like a snap or a crack?”
“No. I mean, I was right there and everything.” She sat up and gathered her long, loose hair into a ponytail. “But I was, like, over at the slide with other kids, so I didn’t see exactly what happened to Lucy, but like, all of a sudden she goes, owww, and I knew something was wrong.”
I felt uneasy. It was after midnight. The drive to the hospital was winding, dark, and treacherous at night and it might be for nothing at all. I phoned the doctor on call.
“She fell off a playground swing?” the doctor asked. “And her leg still hurts after four hours with no physical findings?”
I agreed it didn’t make sense. Was I missing something? The doctor said it was probably nothing and could wait until morning. “If you say the leg looks normal, just observe her overnight.” He paused to reconsider his certainty. “The femur is the largest, strongest bone in the body. A fracture would be very rare. There would have to be major trauma. She would be in a lot of pain if it was broken. You’d see clinical findings.” I heard him tap his finger against his lips. “Keep her in the infirmary and I’ll examine her in the morning.”
Who could sleep? I stayed by her side all night, popping up frequently to check on her. In the morning, bright and early, a few friends from her cabin came to visit. “How ya doing, Wonder Woman?” one asked. “You were like Tarzan!”
Tarzan? I listened in closer.
“I bet you’re never going to do that again, are ya?”
I pulled out Luc
y’s health form. Her parents hadn’t written any comments, but Lucy herself had. There, scribbled in her own handwriting under the section “Restrictions on Activities,” it read: “I am I am I am. I am Superman. I can do anything.” I went back to her. “Lucy, describe to me again what happened.”
“She was on the tire swing,” her friend piped up. “She was swinging and swinging, around and around, and then smashed into the wooden post.”
Forceful trauma can shatter a femur! I splinted her leg and ran for my car keys.
At the hospital, a ward clerk who had just stepped away from her computer was walking past when something caught her eye on the X-ray viewing box. She readjusted her glasses and made the diagnosis. “That’s a helluva broken leg!” The bone had cracked in two, leaving a gaping space in between. If one of those sharp, jagged edges of bone had pierced an artery, Lucy could have bled to death in minutes!
I rode in a two-engine prop plane from a nearby air strip, right onto the landing pad of Sick Children’s Hospital and delivered Lucy into both the parents’ and the orthopedic surgeon’s arms. After surgery, she was fine and would likely heal nicely, but I would take longer to recover.
I was newly sobered with the weight of my responsibility. Clearly, children did not always fit textbook descriptions. A camp nurse had to be a detective, too, along with everything else.
THE LAST WEEK OF CAMP was quiet, as if the kids knew to back off, the nurse couldn’t take any more stress. I strolled around camp and everywhere I looked, I saw kids laughing, smiling, and being silly. I relaxed and began to cajole them about some of the more decidedly underwhelming complaints:
“I can’t stop coughing. Do I have SARS?“
“The pain comes and goes and moves all around my body.”
“I got bit by the hugest mosquito. Do you think I might get West Nile?”
“A fly flew in my ear. It’s buzzing inside my brain and making everything go kablooey!”
Greg burst into the infirmary. “I need a condom. Right away. You got any?”
“Why don’t you come into my office for a talk?” I was able to call his bluff because I’d caught a glimpse of the two guys who had sent him on this mission, snickering behind the bushes.
“No, forget it,” he replied hastily. He turned, ready to leave without his bounty, and then bolted.
But I’d finally solved the mystery of his ineffective ADD meds. His counsellor told me he’d caught him throwing them in the garbage can outside the infirmary. Somewhere in the forest there was a very well-behaved raccoon.
ON THE LAST NIGHT of camp, just before falling asleep, I listened to CBC Radio playing Poulenc’s Concerto for Piano and Oboe. “A gorgeous, witty, and mysterious piece of music,” Shelley Soames, the announcer, said. “Just like someone you’d like to get to know.” I was once like that, but now I am old and weary. I wanted to get home. I longed to be with Ivan. I slept through the night uninterrupted.
The next morning, there were lots of tears and hugs as the buses came to pick up the kids for the drive back to the city. The mosquitoes, the blackflies, the wet towels, the monotonous food, and the homesick days were all forgotten now.
“I love you,” two girls sobbed into one another and pledged, “best friends forever.”
“Camp made me who I am today,” said Sam, all of sixteen years old, as he was getting on the bus. It had been his last year as a camper. “Next year I’ll be a counsellor.”
“What was the best thing about camp?” I asked a few of them.
“I learned to ride a bike,” Lianne said, her beautiful hair hopelessly tangled. “My mom will be so happy.”
“Doing nothing,” another said. “It’s the best. And no math tutors.”
“Making music,” a young camper said, her guitar slung over her shoulder, “it’s way better than downloading.”
Sean, the head tripper, and his girlfriend, the curvaceous Sarah, who seemed to have reconciled, however temporarily, with her body’s need to eat three meals a day, both came over to give me big hugs. “You’re awesome, Nursezilla,” Sean said.
Mitchell came over to say goodbye and give me a big hug. “You’re the nicest person at camp, Nurse Tilda. By far the coolest.”
My kids and I piled into the car with all our luggage and lots of woven, plastic key chains, popsicle-stick napkin-holders, and lopsided clay pots. The counsellors swarmed our car, shouting goodbye and blowing us kisses.
Terry said, “I know you worked your butt off, but I hope you had some good times, too.”
“Of course,” I murmured, starting the ignition. My car’s gas tank was full, but I was running on empty; my personal reservoir was down to zero.
“Oh, one more thing,” he said as he bent down to the car window. “Don’t be surprised if you feel out of sorts for a few days when you get home. It’s common to take a while to readjust to your real life in the city, after camp.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “Thanks, Terry.” I shifted into drive. I wanted to be home already.
“What about next year?” he called out. “You interested? The job is yours!”
“Call me in January!” I shouted back.
* FYI: Red-tinged, three-pronged, droopy leaves.
16
OFF-DUTY
Just as Terry predicted, I did have an unsettled, deflated sort of feeling for a few days once home from camp. I think we were all out of sorts, returning to the hustle and bustle of the city, its humidity and smog, and now having to cool off in chlorinated public pools instead of the pristine lake at camp. I was eager to get back to the ICU, catch up with friends there, and return to the familiar rigour of my work. Then, I got news that jolted me out of my malaise.
It was from Daphne Marcus, my old writing partner. We hadn’t seen each other nearly as often as during those six continuous years when we met every week to write together. I still saw her from time to time at some of the poetry readings she gave around town and we always waved at each other at our gym, where she worked out regularly and I, sporadically. While I’d been at camp, she’d left a phone message to call when I got a chance, nothing urgent she’d added, but when I finally got back to her it was just in time because she was going into the hospital the very next day.
“I’ve been having difficulty doing my workout,” she explained on the phone. “I haven’t been feeling myself.” It was strange to hear her complain of anything, especially something about her body. She had yearnings, quandaries, and quests, but never ordinary aches and pains. She said she had been having stomach pains and bloating and on the phone, I could hear she was short of breath. At the end of our conversation, she mentioned, almost in passing, that the doctor had told her she had ovarian cancer. She said it as if it were neither good nor bad news.
“Oh, how terrible!” I gasped. Not the disease that whispers, the “Silent Killer,” whose symptoms are usually only felt when it is too late to do much! It was a terrible diagnosis, especially with such advanced symptoms. I was stunned.
“I’m having surgery tomorrow to remove the tumour,” Daphne said calmly.
Did she need anything? I asked. Did she want me to take her to the hospital? Or be there with her after the surgery? No, Ken, her husband, would go with her, but she thanked me graciously. She just wanted me to know. She had friends all around the world, as well as lovers, muses, and fans, but she had not told any of them. I understood that with me she felt safe, not only because it was me, but because I was a nurse. I knew that she wanted me to be her nurse.
The day after her surgery, Daphne started on a course of aggressive chemotherapy. Two days later she was discharged from the hospital, and we met for lunch at a dingy, old-fashioned diner around the corner from her house. It wasn’t our usual type of place, but she wanted to go somewhere she could walk to. She said she was going to walk herself well.
She looked as elegant as ever, in a tailored pantsuit and Gucci print silk blouse. Daphne was not beautiful, but had an arresting elegance, a naive sophisticati
on that caught people’s attention.
“All of this,” she ran her manicured fingers through her lustrous, wavy hair, “is going to go.” She gave a laugh, neither rueful nor grim, more amused, than anything. “I’ve already chosen a wig.” She ordered weak tea because she wasn’t hungry, and I ordered a pastrami sandwich, because, well, I was. She looked at me unblinking while I ate. I think my presence gave her comfort, but she may also have been composing a poem.
“How’s your family taking this?” I knew them well. In her poems she had described Ken as her devoted husband and her son, Daniel, just finishing high school, as brilliant.
“Daniel is angry.” She pushed the tea aside and dabbed at her lips. She reapplied her deep, red lipstick, the signal that she was ready to soar into her world of words. She took out her notebook and a fountain pen, one with purple ink, and looked at me as if to say, Where’s yours?
“Who is he angry at?” (I liked to write, too, but not nearly as much as she did.)
“At me.”
“He’s angry at you for getting sick?” I asked even though I understood all too well the range of emotions, from rage to love, which a child could feel toward a sick mother. I slathered more hot mustard on my sandwich, trying to obliterate the familiar, disturbing thoughts.
“He has a lot of reasons to be angry at me, but I must remain the mother.”
“How do you manage that?”
“I let him say what he has to say and listen but don’t always take it in.”
She must have sensed my need for further explanation, despite her eagerness to start writing.
“If someone says something to you, you have a choice whether to receive it or not. If you don’t accept it, it will never get to its destination.”
She was often full of new-age wisdom that I usually discounted, but this actually made sense. “What did he say?” She never minded when I pried.
“He said, ‘If you were to die tomorrow, I wouldn’t feel a thing.’ He said I had shamed him and had been disrespectful to his father.” She picked up her pen. “I made a conscious choice not to take in his anger. I kept my cool.”