by Tilda Shalof
As I steered the car into the parking lot, I took a deep breath (of fresh air!) and readied myself for the plunge into The Great Outdoors.
2
BAND-AIDS, CALAMINE, AND A CAPPUCCINO TO GO
Camp Na-Gee-La was situated on an irregularly shaped piece of land made up of hills and valleys. At its hilly centre was a flagpole, from which a path sloped down to the waterfront. The mess hall was on another hill, and the infirmary was located on the highest hill of all. By the time I finished dealing with Zack’s injury, it was late evening. Mike showed me to my new home, a room at the back of the infirmary. My kids would stay there with me for the night. Tomorrow, after all the other campers had arrived and camp officially began, they would join up with their cabin groups. I unpacked my things, organizing them on the wooden shelves provided, and tried to settle down my kids. We’d missed dinner, but I had brought some fruit and crackers with me, and we munched on those. They were excited but tired too, and soon fell asleep together on one of the two narrow cots in my room.
I sat down for a moment on the other cot to review some of my reasons for getting involved in this adventure in the first place. Camp fees can be expensive and I liked the idea of bartering my skills in exchange for them, but my real motivation was to get a ticket to the world of camp. It was too late for me to be a camper but this might be the next best thing. “Camp nurse” would also be my cover to spy on my own kids. I don’t think of myself as an overprotective parent, but I admit I can get involved (too involved?) in my kids’ worlds. I am the kind of mother who knew the adventures of Thomas the Tank Engine, and those of his sidekicks, Percy, Henry, James, and Edward, too. During the Pokémon craze, it was not every mother who could rhyme off the secret powers of Charmeleon, Squirtle, and Blastoise, but I could. Now, at camp, I could be on the inside and get the scoop on my kids’ secret lives, while keeping a respectful, unobtrusive distance, of course. I could be a fly on the cabin wall. They would hardly even notice I was there.
Something else intrigued me about camp. I longed to learn the secrets of the successful campers. It was much easier for me to understand why someone might not like camp, what with the non-stop, exhausting activities, the noisy silliness, the bothersome bugs – not to mention the lack of books, solitude, and quiet time. I wanted to see for myself why so many loved it.
I went to check out the infirmary, down the hall. It consisted of a waiting room with a couch, a few plastic chairs, and a rattling old refrigerator. There were two other rooms, one with four beds for overnight patients and the other with an examining table and a desk. I took stock. There wasn’t much in the way of equipment and the supplies looked like they’d fallen off the back of the proverbial truck. I found a dusty stethoscope, an antique blood pressure machine that belonged in a museum, a bottle of Tylenol long past its expiry date, a box of Band-Aids, a few bottles of rubbing alcohol, antiseptic, and a mystery bottle, unlabelled. All in all, this was not enough to supply a decent first-aid kit, let alone provide for an emergency. There was no airway (a tubular device to assist with breathing), no oxygen tank, no iv equipment or intravenous drugs. I had no medications to treat a seizure, a cardiac arrest, an asthma attack, or anaphylactic shock. The only thing remotely amusing about this situation was an object I discovered while rummaging in the drawer of the rickety old desk. It was a faded, cardboard disc from the 1950s called a first-aid wheel. Various injuries and ailments were listed around the perimeter of the dial. You could turn the dial and a little window revealed the treatment. I took a twirl and landed upon advice for “Choking,” positioned in between the medieval-sounding “Blood-Letting” and “Dyspepsia,” all seemingly equal slices of significance on the pinwheel pie:
Loosen neckband. If object in throat, remove with finger. If child, hold upside down and slap vigorously on back. If measures fail, call doctor.
There was no mention of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), but it probably hadn’t been invented when this once-useful tool had been devised. I put the first-aid wheel back in the drawer. It was a charming artifact but of little use to me.
It was getting dark, but I stood for a few moments on the porch to get a sense of the lay of the land. The campgrounds seemed rundown and shabby, but surely it would look better in the morning light?
That first night, lying on the other narrow cot in my new room, I couldn’t fall asleep. All I could think of was Zack’s dirty, bloody knee. I imagined it morphing into full-blown septic shock. I had seen minor wounds – even hangnails and paper cuts – develop alarmingly fast into raging infections that raced through the body at lightning speed, destroying every organ, tissue, and muscle in their way. A few of these cases had even turned out to be the devastating necrotizing fasciitis, or nec fash, as we nurses called it, generally known to the public as the flesh-eating disease. I’ll never forget one patient I’d taken care of who had a swollen, inflamed toe. Within hours the infection had spread up his leg into his groin. Basically, it would have been game over if he hadn’t been brought to the ICU, lickety-split.
My clinical experience was mostly treating worst-case scenarios and catastrophes. However, at least in the hospital I could anticipate them and have everything on hand I needed. Here, I had a feeling things would be simply coming at me, and I’d have none of the monitors or ICU gadgets I relied upon to know my patients’ conditions and anticipate problems. My tool box was empty.
Something else threw me: When I went to make notes about Zack’s injury, I couldn’t find a chart or medical records. There was no record about any pre-existing medical history, allergies, or immunizations. In fact, the camp should have had detailed files for every camper and counsellor, but I only found a few health forms and most were incomplete. The nursing credo of not documented, not done haunted me. This place was scaring me.
I thought of all those inviting ads for camp nurses in the back of the nursing journals I subscribed to. “Have a fun-tastic, fun-nomenal summer with your kids!” they promised. The best was: “Get paid to have fun!” They had lured me in but now that I was here I felt out of my depth and way beyond my comfort zone. This place was more like a danger zone. What had I gotten myself into?
I was still tossing and turning later that night when music started blasting out from the mess hall. I got up, threw on my clothes, and went out to see what was happening. I stood on the mess hall porch and peered through the window. It was Party Central in there! The counsellors were bringing down the house with a full-blown rave. Techno music was pouring out of a portable CD player and bodies were swaying and undulating to the pounding, hypnotic beat. On the table were bottles of beer and wine coolers.
Two guys rushed in past me, arm in arm, shouting, “Let’s partay! It’s our last chance before the kids get here.”
Were these counsellor-kids the ones going to be responsible for the camper-kids? When I was sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen, I definitely didn’t have the maturity to be a counsellor – and I was beginning to wonder if they did either. As camp nurse, was it my role to put an end to their fun? Probably. But it wasn’t much of a stretch to dial up my own inner teenager and remember what I was like. I, too, had loved to cut loose and be wild. A part of me wanted to join in on the fun with them, but reluctantly, I headed back to my cabin and slept for what seemed like a few minutes.
The next thing I knew it was morning. The sun was blazing and music blared from scratchy speakers that had been placed in the trees. I stood on the porch of the infirmary to get a daytime overview of the camp from my vantage point on top of the hill. I’d been wrong: in the clear morning light of day, the place looked worse, much worse. It was a dump. The cabins were ramshackle and the mess hall, with its caved-in roof and crumbling porch, looked like a condemned building. There was garbage and empty beer bottles littered all over the ground from the party the night before. The campers’ wood cabins were rundown, dilapidated shacks spread out helter-skelter in a valley. The “Nature Shack” was wind-blown, and the arts-and-crafts tent appeared to
be sinking into the mud. Down, down the entire camp slumped to the one jewel of the place: the waterfront. With Camp Na-Gee-La situated on beautiful Lost Loon Lake with its sandy beach and protected cove, it made me wonder why Zack and Mike had been swimming in a pond in the backwoods.
On the porch outside the mess hall, a counsellor was strumming “Stairway to Heaven” and singing soulfully. It was way too early in the day for that intense song, but preferable, I supposed, to last night’s head-banging lullabies. Other counsellors were on the grass, tossing Frisbees, and unbelievably, a few counsellors were stretched out on the lawn, covered in baby oil, “catching some early morning rays,” they told me. I made a note to self to talk with them later about sun safety practices. Meanwhile, Harry and Max were amusing themselves while we all waited for breakfast.
Mike came over. “Hey, Nurse Tilda. Rough night? You look wrecked. Not a good look for you – no offence! That was your last chance to rest. The kids arrive this afternoon, so you’d better pace yourself. Did you manage to get any sleep?”
I shook my head.
“Ahh, that sucks.”
“Is there coffee?” I asked.
Mike led me to the kitchen for a cup of hot tap water poured over instant decaffeinated crystals. He introduced me to the cook, a man who was a bit older than the others, which put him in his mid-twenties. He had a scruffy beard and spiky, geometric tattoos depicting daggers and jagged wires along his arms. “You must be the nurse dude,” he said. “My name is Gord, but everyone calls me Sarge.”
I looked around Sarge’s kitchen. A young woman in a do-rag, wearing an inside-out T-shirt and tattered jeans, stood at the stove, breaking eggs into an industrial-sized frying pan with one hand and flipping pancakes with the other. Two gas burners were blazing with nothing on them. On the counter in the direct sunlight was an open bottle of mayonnaise. On the floor in front of the stove, glistening in the rays of sun, was a puddle of melted butter. Beside the puddle were two huge vats, one filled to the brim with peanut butter and the other with strawberry jam, over which bees were noisily buzzing. This place was a death trap if anyone had any life-threatening allergies. I would have to talk with Sarge about the hazards in his kitchen. Maybe I could also tactfully drop hints about hygiene, especially hand washing, for food handlers.
“Hey, I bet you’re the nurse! Wassup?” A tall, lanky guy came over and brushed the hair out of his eyes to get a look at me. He pointed at himself. “The name’s Jake but everyone calls me Wheels.” He told me he was the camp driver. “I run the kids into town to the hospital and pick up supplies. I know everything about camp, so whatever you need, call on me – no explanation necessary.” He hiked up his baggy pants that were slipping off his hips.
I suddenly realized how they all knew I was the nurse. I was, by far, the oldest person at Camp Na-Gee-La. My only competition for this dubious title was Anderson, a middle-aged maintenance man I’d been hearing about, who would visit the camp from time to time to do repairs. After breakfast, I left the mess hall and noticed Sarge sitting on the stoop out the back of the kitchen, surrounded by overflowing garbage cans, smoking a cigarette. I waved at him. “Hey Sarge, thanks for breakfast.” He grunted in response. “What’s for lunch?” I asked.
“Don’t talk to me when I’m in my Zen garden,” he snapped, but then added, less rudely, “Don’t worry, it’ll be something edible.”
As I made my way back to the infirmary, I happened to meet Anderson. I found him leaning against a tree, just outside the mess hall, observing something with the focused gaze of a scientist.
“I’ve been standing here for twenty minutes,” he said. “See that?” He pointed to a bottle of ketchup lying directly in the path of counsellors filing out of the dining hall after breakfast. They were stepping around or over it. “They won’t pick it up. No one gives a rat’s ass about this shit hole.” He shook his head in disgust. “Nothing worse than rich socialists.”
Suddenly, I heard laughter and the pounding of running feet. “They’re here! The kids are here!” The sun worshippers, Frisbee-tossers, and soulful guitar-player whooped, and raced to the flagpole, the central spot in camp, where the buses were arriving and unloading the campers. As they tumbled out, each child was greeted and hugged by a counsellor. Most of them looked happy to be there, but I quickly spotted two little ones, a girl about ten and her younger brother, who seemed bewildered. In no time, the little boy found his counsellor from last year and ran to him. The counsellor picked him up, threw him in the air, caught him and spun him around and around. His sister looked on the verge of tears, but then she too was found by her counsellor and gently coaxed away to her cabin. Max eagerly went off to the youngest cabin, the “Friends,” and Harry went off with the “Fellows.” The next group, the thirteen-and fourteen-year-olds, were the “Comrades,” and the oldest campers, the fifteen-and sixteen-year-olds, who stood off in a group by themselves, were “Counsellors in Training,” or CITS.
I returned to the infirmary to wait for “business” to arrive.
They came. Children lined up to hand in their meds, and in no time I was inundated with plastic baggies filled with pills, capsules, and tablets; meds in film canisters, old cosmetic bags, and Tupperware containers. Someone handed me a mysterious herbal mixture that came in an empty jewellery box. I received a box full of tiny bottles of homeopathic remedies, some to be given in the event of “feelings of unease” and others for “disorientation.” In a bottle decorated with Strawberry Shortcake and Winnie-the-Pooh stickers were tablets that looked like Advil but labelled amoxicillin, an antibiotic. One child handed me a large business envelope containing black-and-white capsules and red-and-white tablets, all mixed together. In an empty m&m’s box, I found ten tablets of what appeared to be Tylenol with thirty milligrams of codeine, a heavy-duty narcotic. “They’re my T3s,” the young child told me, not too pleased to have to turn them in to me.
Mike popped by to say “hey” and inform me that the first day of camp was known as Safe Day. “Everyone can hand over any contraband to you,” he explained. “You know, like booze, smokes, or drugs.”
The whole scene was unnerving: I, who was used to the precise and controlled hospital environment where I had administered drugs in micrograms or titrated medications in milligrams or millilitres, was now expected to dispense unknown tablets by the handful?
I read through the explanatory notes some parents sent:
Jay is in tune with his body. He will let you know which pills he needs and when.
Madison experiences strange sensations at times. She’ll tell you when this happens.
Phillip sometimes complains of depression, but he loves camp. Just talk him through it if it happens or if he says the “bad feelings” are coming over him.
In the hospital, I couldn’t give an Aspirin without a doctor’s order, but suddenly, here at camp, it seemed like anything went.
Kids kept coming. After lunch, they continued to line up on the infirmary steps and then spilled onto the grass outside, waiting to hand in their meds or discuss something with me.
“Hi, are you the nurse?” A pretty little girl pushed to the front of the line. She was barefoot, in a bathing suit, her long hair wet from a dip in the lake. “Hi, I’m Micaela and I’m going to be a doctor, an interventional neuroradiologist. My mother is a microbiologist and she put me on a drug holiday for camp. I normally take a cocktail of meds, but she thought I should have a break. Hey, what’s that?” She sniffed the air. “It smells like our kitchen after my mom mops the floor.”
“It’s the trees. Your mom must use pine-scented cleaner.”
Micaela handed me a note from her mom, entitled “Presenting … Micaela Brown.” It explained that Micaela had a “touch” of attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity but was a “free spirit who needs to be allowed to do her own thing.”
“I’ve never actually been fond of camp,” Micaela said, “but my hypothesis was I would like this one because it’s unique.” She glanced at
me to see if I was keeping up with her. “I know, I know, I use lots of polysyllabic words. Everyone tells me that. I’ve been tested, and verbally, I’m right off the charts! I’m in the ninety-ninth percentile for my age, which is twelve, going on twenty, as my mom always says.”
“Have you ever been to camp before?” I said to try to interrupt the torrent of words.
“Oh, I’ve been going to camp, like, forever. Well, for the past three years, but not this camp. Now, I live for camp. At first, I didn’t want to come, but then my mother found this place. She decided I should take a break from my meds, because it’s not like school where I need them. My mother says nature has a calming effect, but I don’t like nature. Well, I don’t mind nature, per se, just the bugs.”
“Where’s your counsellor?” I looked around for someone to take her away, eyeing the line of kids stretching on into the afternoon.
“She knows I’m here. I love to visit the nurse. Hey, do you have ibuprofen? I get bad headaches and my head explodes. I get an aura with scintillating scotoma, you know, that wiggly, jiggly flashiness?” She drew a wavy picture in the air with her hands.
She was wearing me out. “Micaela, I have to see the other kids.”
“I’m sorry! Sometimes I give too much information. Am I TMI comin’ at ya? I know I talk a lot, but what can I do? My mom says I’m a turbo-talker.”
For someone with attention deficit, it seemed she had an amazing ability to focus – at least, on things that interested her.
That first evening there was a singsong for all the campers around a roaring bonfire. Zack, or Moon Doggie as he was called at camp (and who hadn’t, by the way, come to the infirmary to get his wound cleaned, as I had instructed), played the guitar while the kids sang “We Shall Overcome,” “Give Peace a Chance,” “My Song Is My Weapon” and other protest songs about the evils of materialism, the triumph of the working class, and the fight for freedom.