Just a Nurse

Robert Flournoy

 

© Copyright 2017 by Robert Flournoy  
 

 Picture of the 1st Calvary shoulder patch.

She became a hospice nurse and remained so for seven years. Her days and nights were spent in the homes of the dying, administering morphine and the comfort that she could to the near dead and their families.

Her last year she sat with a man of 80 years as he passed away, leaving an aged widow with no children alone in the home until the coroner came for the body. 
  It was Christmas Eve. She had to move on to another home where another passing occurred at 3 AM on the day of our lord's birth. A 39 year old cancer victim with a wife and 5 young children.

Her days were a blur of such events, the years lining up behind her, the names of the dead lost, many in their teens, or younger, the youngest 3.

She did not drink or partake of any stress relievers as she did not have the time. Her days and months were a continuum of painful deaths and grieving survivors. She was robotic in her motions as her husband watched the horrific transformation from smiling bride to blank eyed automaton.

They sank into despair together until she said enough. She smiled only once afterward, when she heard someone say that God loved us. The children they had planned on having were no longer an option. She tried to find the joy in life that she had once known, but wore a dank dark December drizzling shawl on her shoulders, a wet cold weight until the day that she died.

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