30 minutes in the life of {a nurse.}

Yellow florescent lights run in tracks along the ceiling down the hallway in straight lines, stark incandescence highlights each body with equal harshness.  Busy blurs move along under those lighted tracks like cars in the fast lane on a busy highway at rush hour. In and out of rooms, some stopping at mounted wall computers like stop-lights, squinting at and punching out numbers. White coats, white papers, white shoes, white faces. Busy business to be done by all.

The slow lane lumbers along beside with the stop-and-go shuffle of walker traffic. Each inching painfully along, blue slipper steps alternating between aluminum walker legs, dragging beeping poles and swinging bags of colored juices behind.  Some with spindly spider legs fragilely supporting the bird body up above, some with weeble-wobble noodle legs wavering uncertainly, some with swollen tree-trunk limbs stiff shuffle thumping, but all achieving wondrous success by merely standing on those two legs and moving one foot in front of the other.

Sharp left-handed turn into room 704, red cardiac monitor alarms blinking like traffic lights ahead.  Naked white lump of flesh tied up in a tangled mess of red, green, white, brown, black wires wiggling every which direction from under piles of white stiff hospital blankets. Iridescent blue veins stand-out barely covered by paper-thin tissue-paper white skin, while wiry bony fingers pull and fuss, trying unsuccessfully to break free from the wired mess.  Pleasantly confused naked bodies, let calm coaxing helping hands straighten and organize cords and tubes, boost and fluff and re-tuck. Red call light placed in laps with reminders, while loud coughing and beeps erupt from next door.

Mr. 705. Brisk busy steps in a professional rush to the next crisis. Hunched over, sweat streaming, each rasp of a breath sounding and looking labored and desperate; it’s another naked body needing air. Phone calls, doctors paged, new tubes, the hiss of high-flow oxygen titration, another body boost up, a body unable to sit up on their own to get air into lungs. Now: coach the breathing, slow down, talk down the breathless hysteria. Morphine and Ativan IV push STAT from the medication Pyxis rushed back to the room, a saline flush squirted into the air spraying a cool mist onto the flushed naked face.  Smiling face doesn’t let scared body see stress or worry or urgency.  Hand on shoulder, lips to ear, coaching and calming, breath-by-breath reassurance until two sets of lungs, two mouths, two bodies breathing as one. Slow. Even. Perfusion. Ventilation. Oxygenation. The surrounding chaos outside frozen in time, the only real moment is this; eyes connecting, breathing slowing, a calm transferred, until oxygen exchange is successful.

Phone blast.  Re-enter hall traffic, cut-through phone calls and buzz at the desk, dodging stretchers coming and going, loaded with undiagnosed bodies headed to tests determining fates.  Multiple IV beeps blaring from multiple rooms interrupt any hallway navigation.

Ms. 719. code brown. Rigid obtunded naked body covered in brown. Stool everywhere; shoulders to toes. Log-rolling resistant unbending limbs, warm white washcloths drip soap-suds all over the naked soiled body, stiffly unaware, blissfully oblivious to her naked exposure. Judge Judy’s constant background blabbing blocking buzz from the conflict two rooms over. Blue latex-free gloves scrubbing red raw excoriated skin with careful methodical precision. Fresh white sheets tucked and folded with puffs of white powder layered between skin and bed. Perfectly propped pillows, call it good; at least for the next two hours. Deep sigh. Knock on the next door.

Ms. 721 screams. “Help! Will someone please help me?! They have taken my purse and I am late to the theatre!”  Confusion hanging thick in the air, no logic or reason welcome here. Bright red lipstick and brown painted eyebrows pop awkwardly from pale white bony cheeks, moving in unnatural frenzied wiggles as she frantically searched the room, trying to make sense of something in her perplexed non-reality. Pink finger-nails a nostalgic link, connecting to another world far far away, a place that only existed in her head. Hands held. Concern heard. Medication given. Try only a half-dose of xanax tonight. And more busy wash-clothes to fold.

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