The Sisterhood - Michael Palmer [30]
For nearly an hour Christine had sat in the nurses lounge sharing her tears and her anger with Janet Poulos. Carefully, gradually, Janet had introduced her to knowledge of The Sisterhood of Life.
Over the two days following the old woman’s tracheotomy, Christine had spent many hours discussing her dismal condition with Janet, while at the same time learning more and more about The Sisterhood. Throughout her nursing career she had been able to find joy in even the most distasteful aspects of daily patient care. But with each minute spent helping to prolong the agony of the old woman, Christine’s frustration grew. Disconnecting the respirator to suction the tube each hour. Frequent turnings. Urinary catheter changes. Deep intramuscular injections. Frantically trying to keep abreast of one incipient bedsore after another. And always the eyes looking at her, looking through her, their message even more desperate than before.
Finally the commitment was there. Christine followed the direction given to her by Janet Poulos and reported the old woman’s case to the Regional Screening Committee. A day later, she received their approval and instructions.
Toward the end of her shift she slipped quietly into the woman’s room. The drone of the respirator blended eerily with the howling winter wind outside. In the darkness she felt the woman watching her. She bent over the bed, pressing the tears on her cheek against the woman’s temple. After a few moments, she felt her nod—once and then again. She knew! Somehow she knew. Christine gently kissed her forehead.
She brought her lips close to one ear and whispered, “I love you.”
Reaching up, she disconnected the respirator, then waited in the darkness for five minutes before reconnecting it.
Nearly four hours into the next shift a nurse reported that she was unable to feel a pulse or obtain a blood pressure on the woman. A resident was called and, after finding a straight line on her electrocardiogram, pronounced the woman dead. Later that morning her two sons, much relieved at the end of their mother’s suffering, had the body brought to a local funeral home. By 11 A.M. her bed was filled by a young divorcée in for elective breast augmentation. Like the waters of a pond, disturbed momentarily by a pebble, the hospital appeared as it always had, the last ripples of the old woman’s existence gone from its surface
“Christine?”
She spun toward the voice. It was Janet Poulos.
“You okay?”
Christine nodded.
“It looked like you were posing for the cover of Nurse Beautiful.”
“More like Nurse Troubled.”
“That scene with Huttner and the Professor?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“No. I mean maybe a little. I mean you’re the only one who …”
Janet silenced her with a raised hand. “The visitors’ lounge is empty.” She nodded toward the nurses’ lounge. “From the looks of things in there, you’ve got about ten minutes before report. It’s been sort of crazy up here tonight, hasn’t it? I heard there were some problems after that Mr. Chapman was found dead,” Janet added.
As they walked to the small visitors’ lounge, Christine described the reaction of John Chapman’s griefstricken widow. Janet shook her head in disbelief.
“Why do you think she picked on the flowers to throw around the room?” she asked.
“Oh, she threw other things, too. Not just flowers.” Christine dropped onto a sofa and Janet took the chair across from her.
“So she wrecked everything?”
“Almost. We managed to salvage two vases.”
“Oh?” Janet shifted in her chair.
“Yes, and even one of those was a little strange.”
“How do you mean?