Souls In The Wind by nantahala

Souls In The Wind
by
� nantahala_whispers

Text She had a very small face. Now that I think of it, she didn't
have any real distinguishing features. She was indistinguishable;
nondescript like poorly executed computer-generated mug shots on
employee badges. Mug shots that made everyone look `alike'
in their groups as if to say, "Oh, another white girl, brown
hair. Check. NEXT!" She was just a wisp, a nineteen year old
wisp.

There are persons sometimes who change your life forever. Or, maybe
it is you who changes yourself after being with them. They grab you
and they shake you. You get rattled and realize, once they're gone,
that you can never go back to where you were before. Even if you
wanted to, you just can't. Thomas Wolf was right, you can look
homeward but you can never go back again. Something blocks the way
and sometimes the 'something' is your own choice.

I hate tan walls. The painters and administrators who made
these "lovely" decisions called the color "mauve."
Those of us who endured it day-in, day-out for twelve hours at a time
called the color "putrid-tan." Maybe on a paint chip, it
WAS mauve. Maybe a painter looked in a bucket being mixed and it WAS
mauve. But here, in this room where taller buildings transformed the
would-be sunny windows into a man-made dark hollow, it was NOT
mauve. It was tan. Tan of no beauty. Tan of no peace. It was Tan
of agitation and sorrow. No hospital room should bear a color so
foreboding. Could be it wasn't the color. I don't know.
Maybe it was the piled high layer after layer of sorrows year after
year, on and on, that made the color so God forsakenly ugly.
Maybe even soothing green would eventually find its way to becoming
murky after years of so many losses and so many tears.

Fall was coming on and the sick were coming out of the woodwork.
Seasons change and what was in balance is no longer so. Lung
season. It was a night when you're a little frayed around the edges
from running here and there until finally, finally it's almost 11pm
and it's all under control and if no one codes, life will be good
till seven am. Then, comes the aggravating word "transfer."
"You have to move bed One to step down. There's a new one coming
in."
"What? WHY do they have to go into One? Are they really isolation?"
"AIDS and Attending says so. Gotta go in One."
"Great, just great."

So, she rolled in with "mamma" in tow and everyone knew instinctively
that "mamma" was going to be trouble. The new girl in One was going
to be intubated. The small thing whose mother's bow in the back of
her hair was larger than this child's face was getting a tube.

I was scurrying around the room, setting things up while the Fellow
and Upper level docs were explaining to her what it meant to be on a
breathing machine and how they needed her to sign for consent. This
little girl is in trouble already. She is pale and her chest is
heaving like someone running. Only, she hasn't been sprinting,
she's been laying in bed.

In the middle of all this, the Fellow looks down and sees "mamma's"
purple toe sox sticking out of her sandals and he almost looses it.
I stepped behind the room's supply column to keep from laughing out
loud at the instant look of pain on his face. He did well. He
didn't laugh. Moments later, Mom was being ushered out the door and
daughter was drugged into relaxation and forgetful bliss.

There are choreographed movements that never vary in step, not in
calm or in emergency---a medical ballet without changes. With Versed
IV and a little Hurricane spray, a tube passed and air is listened
for as the balloon is blown up. The respiratory tech starts taping
the tube in place. Off to the side, doctors hover over the
ventilator like standing over a juke box to pick a song. Only, this
decision is how much of this or that pertaining to oxygen and
pressures and settings for man made breaths in response to natural
ones. X-ray is called to get a chest film and blood is drawn for a
gas. And so it was that all was done and for once, the dance was
not enough and the lung became a deflated balloon. It happens.

A chest tube was called for and another Doctor stepped up from the
wings. This one in a hurry and calling out orders a bit sharp but
not unfriendly, just hurried. First the x-ray to see where the
pneumo was, then the incision made between the ribs to pass the tube
through. Once it is in the chest, the tube's other end is attached
to the Atrium drainage box. At that point it's time for suturing the
tube to the chest wall. Meanwhile, the blue Atrium water bobs up and
down with each breath. Last comes the mile of taping. If there's
one thing you never want to have happen it's to have to call a doctor
and tell him, "Uhm. Chest tube came out." Not done. Well, it is
done but not smiled upon.

All of this makes a mess in a room, in a bed and on a body. A mess
that is never shown on the medical shows on tv; a mess left for the
person in charge of bed One to clean.

Nurses eat their young. They really do. A young nurse, unaware of
the danger will get an attack and never see it coming. I was not
new, not by a longshot. I knew it was going to be a mess and just
ticked off because it was coming. Oh yes. It would happen. As
long as the doctors are at the bedside for a procedure or tending
some emergency, there you will find the REAL nurses. The ones who
live to hand over a tube or a package of Betadine and with authority
in their voice, call for another chest x-ray. Then, when the
doctor's job is over, when there is paper and trash in the room up
to your knees and when the patient is covered in Betadine and wet
bloody towels and clothes...then, these same nurses disappear. They
vanish. >POOF< One minute, you swam elbow to elbow in a school of
people, then suddenly, you're alone. Well, not exactly alone, the
patient is still there. In a mess; but still there.

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