Angela RN

For Judy

She looked up.  She used to come here a lot, before, praying for the families, praying for peaceful passages, praying for more personal protective equipment for the hospital, praying for compassion, comprehension and understanding, not to mention an end to the coronavirus. But it was different now. The gelatin hues of the stained glass, red, blue, green, gently bathed her body and refracted slightly as it passed on through. 

Moments earlier she had been in room 340, a room that she had spent so much time in, on the Intensive Care Wing of the busy city hospital.  But this time it had been she in the bed, the virus in her veins, the ventilator pumping, pushing air and oxygen in and out of her failing lungs.

“There’s no more use trying,” murmured the doctor as her friend, her dear companion at work stood at Angela’s elbow, tears rolling down behind the face shield, diverted left and right toward her ears by the N95 mask she wore.  “Does she have any family in town?”

“No,” said her friend. “We were her family.”

“I have to stop the ventilator; do you understand that?”

Her friend nodded.  She knew.  She had seen it too many times before.  She wiped at her tears with a gloved hand. The doctor sighed.  It was always hardest when it was one of their own and RN Angela Patterson had been one of the best.  What a cruel thing, this virus, he thought.  What a waste. She was only… what, thirty-six? Forty years old? Another pair of skilled hands lost.  He flicked the ventilator’s switch, and pulled the breathing tube from her throat.  He heard a muffled sob from the nurse by his side. Angela took a deep breath, her lungs rattling with the effort, then another, and a third. Then she breathed no more.

Angela understood, though no one had spoken to her, that she now had a choice. But to her there really didn’t seem to be any other option… she could not leave this place, could not abandon these people who had been her family, this hospital that had been her home for so long. She understood that she could not move on if she chose to stay; she chose to stay. She understood that she now belonged to the hospital, and she felt a sense of contentment settle over her.

Looking around, she paused to take stock of things, a habit she had perfected in life that kept her centered and calm. She still seemed to have a body of sorts, though it was no longer corporeal.  She knew what was happening with her corporeal body, it was being tenderly tended by her friends, and would eventually be rolled down to the morgue. She noted that fact, then consciously let the body go.  She didn’t need it any more.  She lifted what she thought of as her hands to her face. Cool, now.  The fever gone, and she could breathe again, in a way, and as she drew in the fresh air, she thought about how precious it is.  She drew deep, which she hadn’t been able to do in life for weeks, and felt a tingle of that coolness touch all her incorporeal limbs. If I stay here in the chapel, she thought, I will grow maudlin.  “Time for rounds, my girl; move yourself.” She glided out the door.

Her first stop was up the North Tower to see the babies. She eased into the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, looking into the rooms with their incubators. “Welcome,” she whispered, “To the world tiny ones.  It is an exciting and sometimes frightening place. Soak in all the love you can, to gird yourself for the challenges ahead.”

She then slipped through the hall ways downstairs to the Adult Psychiatric Wing. She hovered over a woman weeping in her bed.  Placing a gentle hand on the woman’s brow she whispered, “Peace to you, my dear.  You are valued.  You are loved. Take your rest now, all will be well… Shh…” And the woman closed her eyes, and drifted into a dreamless sleep.

Moving onward to the Infusion Center Angela entered a room where a man was having an IV placed.  “Your migraine will ease,” She whispered, “I know these nurses, they will take care of you.  Relax, and let the medicine work.”  And she smiled as she saw the wrinkles in the man’s brow smooth.

Down to the ER Angela drifted, and she sat for a while with a woman who was watching over her child who had tumbled out of a tree.  The wailing child’s leg was twisted at an unnatural angle, and the mother’s breath came fast, her panicked eyes rolling from the monitor that showed the heartbeat and blood pressure to the eyes of the doctor, who was calmly explaining how they would splint the leg. “Easy, now,” whispered Angela into the mother’s ear, “You have come to the best hospital in the city.  Trust the doctor, she will heal your child.” The mother blinked, and nodded.

Angela forever moved around the hospital with purpose, radiating the calm that had been her finest asset as a nurse.  She paused here and there by bedside and waiting room, leaving a feeling of peace wherever she tarried. Her decision to stay at the hospital was affirmed; after all, she had work to do. She whispered encouragement to weary nurses, and pacified agitated patients.  When it was time for a patient to move on, she pointed out the way to them, easing their passing with her aura of compassion and understanding, just as she had in life. No one ever saw Angela, but her presence was felt. “Old nurses never die,” she thought with a ghostly smile, “they just go PRN.”