Essential Worker

Hospitals are one of my favorite places. The daily drama and the strong emotions are what keep me coming back. This is as opposed to the nursing homes and hospices I sometimes work at, which tend to be less exciting and consist of waiting for the inevitable, rather than attending the unexpected.

I was working a shift at Broadview, the city hospital. It is an old building, on what used to be the city’s well-to-do side. But it has steadily declined along with the city’s fortunes, until it resembled a corpse, slowly crumbling into dust, but unaware of the transition.

The exterior is mostly brick, with an occasional white streak where workmen had replaced missing mortar to reattach the crumbling façade. The windows were mostly dark during the day. At night they shone like a prizefighter’s smile. Some rooms remained dark and shown like missing teeth, conspicuous by the absence of light. Often those dark rooms represented a patient who had not survived the night. The only ward where the lights shone bright regularly was the maternity ward on the south wing. There life began and the rooms were lit in response. I don’t do much work in the maternity ward. That is reserved for those who specialize in that sort of thing.

The wards I work in are usually darker, older, dirtier. They contain those that have been forgotten by their family and the city. The homeless, the immigrants, the poor. There is often no one who will take care of them, and so it is left to me. Some days my presence is welcomed as they know I am there to care for them and give them relief from their pain and suffering. Other times, I am greeted with derision and contempt. It makes no difference to me, as I must go about my work in either case.

I do not enjoy my work, so much as I have resigned myself to it. It must be done, no matter how I feel about it. I have known nothing else for so long, I do not think I could do anything else, even if I was allowed.

I had a conversation with one of my charges one afternoon. They sometimes become conscious of my presence as I do rounds. His name was Charlie, and he was in the end stages of throat cancer. He had stopped caring about his appearance long ago, as he had no family to visit or even to say goodbye to. His grey eyes were sunken in deep sockets in the skeletal remains of his face. He reminded me of the façade outside. Though he was well aware of what was coming, he seemed to have resigned himself to it.

“Why do you do what you do?” he asked me, wheezing his words out around the trach tube that delayed the inevitable. His voice was little more than a whisper, barely audible over the machinery keeping him alive.

“I guess, it’s just my lot.” I said. “Someone has to do this work. If it wasn’t me, it would be someone else, perhaps someone who does not feel the need to be gentle and kind, but rather harsh and abrupt. I prefer my approach.”

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“But why do it at all?” he asked. “Why not leave it up to fate or random chance, or nature?”

“Fate and random chance have already had their opportunity with you. They created the opportunity for you to get sick, and you took it. Their job is done, I am only here to finish what they started.”

He looked uncomfortable at that, realizing that he could not blame what had happened to him on anything other than his own actions. I tried to comfort him.

“You shouldn’t blame yourself. The pieces were put into place long before you even came into this world. You were simply part of a bigger puzzle. Your fate was sealed the first time an an invading Spaniard was offered a pipe long ago.

The pieces of your life do not present themselves for your inspection until long after they have been placed. Life is too short for you to consider even the implications of even one action before you take it. You would be paralyzed with fear of making a wrong choice.

With that, I left him for a while, letting him consider what we had talked about. I got the feeling that he was not happy, but I am not always there to give comfort, sometimes all I can do is provide hard truths.

There were others, some who seemed to welcome my visit, only to be disappointed when I did not take them with me, but left again to continue my rounds.

“You son-of-a-bitch! Get back here!” one yelled. “Don’t leave me!” She sank back into the bed at that point, unable to even summon the energy to curse me further. Her gray hair lay in sweaty wisps against her parchment skin. The hate in her red rimmed eyes followed me out of the room. I was not sorry, there are rules I have to follow too.

I was called to the Maternity ward later, where my coworker was quite busy. She always makes me feel uncomfortable, for some reason, as our work is quite different, and we rarely venture into each other’s areas of expertise. In this case, she asked me to attend as there was work for both of us.

The bright colors and forced cheerfulness of the labor rooms always make me uncomfortable somehow. They fail to tell the whole truth of about what awaits the people there. They give hope, when perhaps caution would be a more appropriate feeling. But again, without hope, there could be no action. Caution tends to lead to stasis.

I saw my her at the end of the bed, standing behind the doctor who was performing the delivery. As was her usual practice, she observed, a beatific smile on her face as she waited for her task to be completed.

The child, red and screaming, greeted the world with a howl of triumph at greeting the world mixed with agony at being taken from the warm confines of the womb.

His mother lay back in the bed and panted with her recent exertions. They put the baby in her arms. She smiled with utter joy, then suddenly turned pale.

“She’s hemorrhaging! I need forceps. Now!” The surgeon glared at his nurses, working quickly to try to find the source of the bleeding. It would do him no good.

It was then that the mother saw me waiting, her eyes filling with tears as she realized she would not see her child again. Then, I took her away, as her place was no longer in that room, but with me.

When my work was done, I went back to my rounds. There were others in the hospital who needed me, even as others needed my counterpart who worked in the Maternity ward. We each have our roles in caring for those that await our visits.

We make up the welcoming committee. She welcomes the living, I welcome the dead.