Confessions of a School Nurse

by Michael Alexander

She shook her head. ‘I knew you wouldn’t understand.’

  I asked her to help me understand.

  ‘Well, you do know she’s Jewish, right?’ I didn’t know she was Jewish, or care for that matter, but Ameena said she’d been worrying about this ever since they’d become friends. A recent trip home during the Christmas break had reminded her of the risk she was taking.

  ‘Do you know what I’ve been taught all my life by my family?’ I shook my head. I already sensed I was about to learn a life lesson, an insight that would change my view of the world. ‘I’ve been raised to hate Jews, but I don’t think I hate them.’ Ameena paused briefly while I tried to digest what I had been told. ‘It’s just the way it is where I’m from, I don’t know what to do.’

  I had never been raised to hate anybody. I can’t imagine parents deliberately poisoning the minds of their offspring, although I’m sure the family do not see it that way.

  I know her brothers – along with many other Saudi students – and I like them. They’re nice guys who seem normal. That is, they’re capable of kindness, compassion, and empathy. I asked what her brothers would do if they found out.

  She wasn’t sure, but felt that they might feel obligated to tell her parents. ‘They’re not like your average Saudi,’ she added. She was right. The drinking, womanising lads were not your typical image of a Saudi Arabian. ‘Do they hate Jewish people?’ I asked, referring to her brothers.

  She smiled at my question. ‘They don’t hate anyone, but they’ll do what they think they have to, especially if it involves their little sister. They may say something to protect me from bad influences.’

  In college we talked about cultural sensitivity and learning how to avoid accidentally offending someone from another culture. I have to confess that at the time I thought it was a load of rubbish. I’m not sure how you accidentally offend someone, because with a bit of tolerance on both sides, and some honest communication, you can usually resolve most issues. But this problem was beyond anything I’d ever come across. I was venturing into new territory, and I didn’t want to take a bad step that would affect both of us negatively.

  ‘Are you sure none of them know?’

  She shook her head. It seems that between the parties, drinking and women chasing, her brothers weren’t keeping all that close an eye on their little sister.

  ‘What do you want from me? How can I help?’ She shrugged her shoulders, not sure what to say.

  ‘It’s good to talk,’ she eventually said.

  ‘Are you going to stay friends?’

  She shrugged. ‘I guess.’

  ‘Good.’

  When I look back at our conversation, I had done nothing miraculous, I had barely said anything, but Ameena left my office a little happier than when she’d come in. Often being someone to talk to, a safe outlet for the kids to vent their worries or frustrations is all it takes to be able to help.

  Through conversations like this, I began to appreciate just how special my boarding school was. If someone like Ameena could make friends with a supposed enemy, and if the other nationalities and religions could co-exist peacefully, despite the way they had been raised, then perhaps these children could be one of the last generations to continue thinking the same as past generations. Time will tell, I suppose, but in Ameena’s eyes at least, there is hope.

  Rocket man

  Sometimes religion, culture and power all look the same to me. Some will fight for one, or all, of these reasons, others will fight not really having a grasp of any of them.

  At fifteen years of age, Faisal was ready to fight for his cause, although right now, he was trying to convince me his black eye was the result of an accident with a door. But I knew better. I’ve seen hundreds of black eyes, and Faisal’s colourful face was the result of a punch-up. It also helped that I had been told by some of his teachers exactly why he’d started a fight.

  The eyeball seemed fine. No visual changes, no pain, and although the white of the eye was bloodshot, Faisal was lucky – because the rest of the eye socket was badly swollen, black and blue.

  ‘Don’t insult me, Faisal,’ I said as I explained just how many black eyes I’d seen. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Sorry, sir, I didn’t mean to give offence, but I did walk into a door.’

  I was nearing the halfway point of my second year at the school and I’d got to know Faisal pretty well by this stage. He was one of the easy-going kids who would often wander into the health centre and try to distract me for twenty minutes with an interesting story, gossip, or show genuine interest in my background and home country. Because of this, I felt that we had a good rapport.

  In fact, a lot of the kids who had been at school for more than a year had developed a good working relationship with the nursing staff. Many come to my office just to talk. Sometimes it can be health related, but just as often I can find myself talking politics, religion, business, anything their young minds could think of.

  I wasn’t going to let it rest there with Faisal. This wasn’t his first fight and I wanted it to be his last, no matter how unlikely that was. Faisal was a dedicated warrior in his own private religious war, and had been heard in class telling everyone ‘you’re going to hell’ if they didn’t surrender to Allah. I may not be able to change his views, but I just might be able to help him control his anger. I didn’t need a confession from him to be able to help.

  Faisal was grinning. I was disappointed he didn’t seem to be taking this seriously. I’ve been in my fair share of punch-ups, although I’d never actually started one. Faisal was going to graduate soon and he needed to learn that in the adult world, a punch-up was treated a lot more seriously.

  ‘Well, it’s none of my business anyway, Faisal. Fortunately your eye looks like it is going to be fine … this time,’ I said, before adding: ‘Is it true?’

  He looked confused.

  ‘What’re you talking about?’

  ‘Well, I heard a rumour about you. I probably shouldn’t say.’

  Faisal leaned towards me, his face suddenly serious, insisting I tell him what the rumour was.

  I was treading a very dangerous line, but I’ve always felt boundaries are there to be pushed. This wasn’t so much a rumour, but it was what people had been saying to him to get a reaction.

  ‘I heard that you’re half Jewish.’

  Faisal jumped out of his char, and stood over me, fuming. ‘Who said that?’

  I shrugged my shoulders, a forced smile on my lips. ‘I’m just kidding, Faisal. I wanted to see how you’d react.’

  My smile vanished as I realised I might have gone too far.

  ‘If you weren’t a teacher, I’d hit you right now.’ Faisal was deadly serious, but there was no turning back for me now.

  ‘Don’t you see what you’ve done, Faisal?’

  He grunted a reply, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. I felt my own ire rising in frustration.

  ‘I know you’re not Jewish.’

  ‘Why’d you say it then? There’s some things you don’t joke about.’

  ‘If you sit and listen, maybe you’ll learn why.’ He reluctantly returned to his seat, his hands clutching the armrests.

  Faisal is from Lebanon, and the tensions between Israel and Hezbollah had been reaching new heights (even though to my relative ignorance they seem to be in a permanent state of tension), although everyone would still be surprised about the breakout of full-scale war in the upcoming months.

  I was never going to be able to make him change his views on who to like and dislike, and it’s not really my job to do so, but if I could make him see what was happening to him and the way he was perceived at the school, something good could come from this. Faisal had been known to get pretty fired up if someone even joked about him being Jewish.

  ‘You’re reacting exactly the way I expect; you’re so predictable. I know what buttons to push.’ Faisal’s face was a blank, registering neither understanding nor confusion, and definitely not forgiveness. ‘The
kids want to see you react. They want to see you get in a fight. Have you thought that maybe they want to see you get in trouble? You’re playing right into their hands.’

  There was some softening in Faisal’s aura, time to drive the message home. ‘Nobody wants a troublemaker around. I could push your buttons to make you do something that would get you in big trouble, maybe I could get you kicked out of school.’

  Most of the kids Faisal was fighting with couldn’t care less what nationality or religion he was. They simply enjoyed watching him get fired up.

  ‘Stop acting like a head case.’

  ‘What did you just call me?’ he asked, surprised instead of angry.

  I can’t say I’ve ever called a student a ‘head case’ before; immediately I realised I probably should try to avoid doing so again. I’d lost control of the conversation. But I didn’t feel like a teacher anymore, or even a nurse, just an older human being who has lived a bit, trying to get through to a decent lad.

  ‘You’re like a puppet. I can pull on your string and watch you jump. There are people in this school who know how to make you dance to their tune. Am I getting through to you? Stop being their bitch.’

  ‘You can’t say that.’ He was right, I can’t. What was wrong with me?

  ‘Too late.’

  ‘OK … I get it all right, I get it. I’ve heard enough.’ The Faisal I knew was returning. ‘I’ve never thought of it like that before,’ he added, before admitting that he was still disturbed at being called a ‘head case’.

  ‘You have to see that you’re only harming yourself. If you get in one more fight, you’re out of school … for good. Don’t be a victim.’

  We sat in silence for a full minute (which is pretty long for a teenager) while he worked out what to do from here. His reaction caught me by surprise as he stood up and shook my hand.

  ‘Does this mean you’re going to refrain from reacting to everyone who pushes your buttons?’ He said he was willing to give it a try.

  Faisal finished the school year without getting into any more fights. It was during the last week of school he told me that when he stopped reacting, people eventually gave up provoking him.

  Unfortunately, stories like this don’t always have happy endings. During the school summer break war broke out between Israel and Hezbollah and upon Faisal’s return to school he confided to me that he’d been spent his time working for Hezbollah.

  ‘I wanted to fire the rockets, but they said I was too young.’ Faisal didn’t seem so young anymore, but I couldn’t reconcile the image of such an easy-going, likeable, intelligent and, ultimately, good young man aspiring to be a rocket-launching soldier. ‘But they let me work as a messenger boy,’ Faisal added proudly.

  I knew I would not be able to make him change his views and it’s not my job to choose sides. There’s over fifty nationalities represented at my school, so it pays not to. I like to think that I at least helped him learn to control his anger, and learn not to be controlled by others, but when I look at the bigger picture, I’m probably being naïve.

  It’s strange, because Faisal is a good person with a good heart. It’s strange because I know students, and friends, on both sides of this conflict and I wonder how can two people on opposing sides of a conflict both have a good heart and kind nature? I struggle to find a ‘bad guy’.

  Niko

  Niko wasn’t a bad guy. In fact, he was a lot like Faisal, a regular kid with deep-rooted convictions.

  As usual Niko had forgotten to collect his daily medication, and I went in search of him, eventually cornering him as he waited outside the headmaster’s office.

  ‘What’d you do this time?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Well, you can tell me more about this thing you didn’t do on the way to the health centre.’

  His meeting with the headmaster would have to wait because he hadn’t received any medicines for three days and his health took priority.

  Niko had recently been diagnosed with epilepsy and was struggling to adjust to his new life.

  Niko was struggling because he could no longer drink alcohol.

  ‘There’s no such thing as a Pole who doesn’t drink vodka.’ He truly believed what he said, but he also knew that alcohol and his epilepsy medication should never mix. Such prescriptions mixed with alcohol can actually have the opposite effect and increase the likelihood of seizures occurring, as well as the severity. His solution was to stop taking his tablets when he planned to drink.

  It’s hard for any teenager to be told they can’t do something, and being told you can’t drink when all your friends do quite regularly is extra tough. But Niko’s life could depend on him following these instructions. Maybe he didn’t believe us, or perhaps I simply did not appreciate how much pressure Niko felt in order to fit in.

  I asked him why he was waiting to see the headmaster, and he insisted that he hadn’t done anything. ‘Mr Currie sent me for no reason. I didn’t do anything wrong.’ Mr Currie was an old hand and kept his classes in line, and it was a little unusual for him to send someone to Mr Driscoll.

  ‘What were you doing just before you were asked to leave?’

  ‘We were talking about gays …’

  Niko was a nice kid with a warm heart. This was going to be difficult to hear …

  ‘I said I hate them.’

  Lots of teenage boys talk like this and I want to believe it’s more habit than actual hate. His comments weren’t as bad as some I’ve heard in my time, but that’s little consolation.

  ‘Do you know anyone who is gay?’ I enquired.

  He shook his head.

  ‘It’s unnatural. It’s a disease. We need to get rid of them.’ His words sounded rehearsed, learned, and lacked malice. Did he really think it a disease?

  ‘Should we get rid of people with epilepsy then? That’s a disease.’ He flinched as if struck. So cruel of me; I regretted my words. Niko was a kid, not quite sixteen, a good kid brought up in a different world to mine. I said ‘sorry’.

  He stared at the ground, slowly shaking his head. ‘Don’t worry, you just don’t get it, that’s all. My epilepsy, it’s different, that gay stuff, it’s just …’ He paused, desperate to find the right words. ‘It’s just so wrong. I saw two guys kissing in McDonald’s the other day. It made me want to vomit.’

  ‘What would you do if one of your children was gay? Would you hate them?’ He said this would never happen to a child of his.

  ‘It could happen to anyone. You probably even know someone who is gay, but don’t realise it.’

  ‘None of my friends are gay and my friends know I’m not gay.’ He spoke with absolute conviction. ‘When I was thirteen my friends bought me a woman to prove I was not gay.’

  Surely he hadn’t said what I thought he’d just said.

  ‘You had sex with a prostitute when you were thirteen years old?’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s normal; all my friends did the same thing.’

  Was this a reflection of a small group of friends, or an established part of growing up where he had? It didn’t matter. Here I was trying to tell this individual to not hate gays, and to give up vodka, when I was clueless about him and the world he lived in.

  ‘We’re not here to talk about this, but about you and your medication.’

  Niko claimed he had simply forgotten to pick up his tablets, and denied planning a drinking binge. ‘I’m not stupid. I know the risks.’ I chose to trust him, but warned him that I would be checking on him every day to make sure he had taken them.

  So much of my job seems to be helping people to co-exist, despite themselves. But nobody is actually born to hate. The biggest influences in deciding whom you like or dislike are your parents, followed by your friends and, of course, the society you live in. I’ve met gay Iranians, Egyptians, Russians, Kazaks, Americans, Brazilians; the list goes on.

  Aside from the normal gripes every employee has with their employer, our school has little bullying, vi
olence is rare, and kids from all walks of life love it here, because they really are accepted and can fit in.

  The lesson for me is learning not to judge those who have opinions I disagree with, because if I did that then I’d never be able even to talk to someone like Niko. You are who you are and, I truly believe, meaningful change has to come from within. I just hope Nico, and many other young people like him, find that change in their lifetimes.

  Celine

  As well as offering a friendly ear and advice, my role is to support the specialist counsellor at the school tackle the big issues. Unfortunately, staff don’t always see eye to eye.

  You can’t counsel someone with bulimia without monitoring other possible symptoms. And you can’t offer sound medical treatment without knowing all the facts. If I don’t know a patient is bulimic, as one counsellor chose to keep from me, I can’t do my job.

  I kept seeing the one poor girl because of stomach pains and burning sensations in her chest. I ended up referring her to Dr Fritz, who passed her on to a gastroenterologist. She was about to have an endoscopy – a procedure that passes a camera into the stomach – when the counsellor finally told me what was wrong. The counsellor felt she was betraying her patient because she was the first person they’d confided in.

  There’s a fine balance between keeping confidentiality and informing those who need to know. Fortunately our next counsellor, Cathy, had too much common sense to hold onto such secrets. Cathy had spent time as a psychologist working in a psychiatric ward before becoming a school counsellor. She oozed experience. And we’d need all the help we could get …

  *

  ‘There’s blood everywhere, you have to come now, she’s cut her wrists, I’m calling an ambulance,’ screeched Lisa. I told her to apply pressure before I hung up the phone and dashed to the car, hurling my medical kit in the back.

  They say ‘one in ten’ people will self-harm at some point in their life, but it often feels like so many more. You begin to wonder if it’s a normal part of growing up, but I think it seems that way because it only takes one victim to draw you into their circle of pain and torment. The signs are not always glaringly obvious, but the effects can last a lifetime.