Thursday, March 29, 2018

Construction, Demolition

The whispered conversation in the waiting room, right outside the open door where I stand to file my paperwork.  She's worried about him, the nurse's won't let her back right now.

I walk back to my desk in the hall.  Thud, thud, thudding behind the construction barriers - I don't like my new post in the hallway on a desk with wheels.  Across from Critical Care Room #4.

Stretcher wheels, in need of oil, roll up to me as I politely demand name and date of birth, then direct the paramedics to the room saved for them.

Step, step, step, I follow them with a wristband for their patient.  Always playing catch-up since renovation began.

Back to the waiting room with paperwork, she's still worried but he's only here for nausea.  He'll be all right. Right?

Coworkers whisper she's the wife of Critical Care #4, tell me they wish she wouldn't sit so close.  She stifles conversation, with all that anxiety.

Back to my work station on wheels.  Thud, thud, thud, the construction demands attention I do not give.  Another rhythm consumes me.

The curtain is usually closed but it's pulled to one side.  They're doing compressions.  They're doing compressions?

I check the board, she was right.  Mr. 4 is only here for Nausea.

He's only here for nausea!!  Nurses, techs, leave him alone, he's fine!

Thud, thud, thud.  They breath for him.

She doesn't even know.  She's out there holding hands with family, telling them it's going to be all right.  She doesn't even know.

A new nurse takes over, compressions should not last this long.  Thud, thud, thud.

Thud, thud.

Thud.

2 comments:

  1. Sometimes I read your stuff as if it were part of a bigger narrative--and this I read as the very opening lines of a story about the narrator. I read it that way because without a single word of exposition or announcement or introduction, you give us a person, busy, distracted--but not too busy or distracted to notice what's happening around her and not too busy or distracted to understand what she notices and not too busy or distracted to feel for strangers in their hour of fear, pain, and grief.

    That's good writing--it's artful without any sense of being fancy. It's informative without making the reader feel like he's being force-fed information. It carries emotion but lets the reader sort it out for himself without telling us how we should feel or react.

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