Morbid Attraction

Penny Newcombe

It’s the first day on the ward as a newly qualified nurse. The moment the card taps and the door opens, a young woman in room one is gasping for air. Kneeling beside her, you take her hand.

Several minutes pass before she calms, and a surge of pride rises within you. This, you tell yourself, is why you’re here. To help.

You glance at the nurses passing by. They all ignore the patient. Their movements are sluggish, as though they’re just as unwell as the people they’re hired to care for. You will not become like them. You’ll stay healthy.

Reprimanded for being late to report, the charge nurse tells you not to assist patients before taking handover.

“She couldn’t breathe,” you explain, your words tumbling out.

“Her oxygen levels are fine,” another nurse responds.

Seven patients are assigned to you. You fail to hide your jitters, but the other nurses don’t notice. Like you, they are absorbed in their handover sheets, scribbling hurried notes. Excitement should fill you. After three years of intensive study, you’re stepping into the footsteps of nursing legends like Florence Nightingale and Edith Cavell. The dream has finally come true.

Your first month blurs in a rush of tasks. Moving from one patient to the next. It’s hard to understand why so many can’t do the simplest things, like lift a fork or stand. You help them, encouraging their independence. Inspiring their health.

A woman in urinary retention requires your attention. Inserting your first catheter, you watch her pain subside as the bag fills with what she couldn’t release, and you’re filled with an addictive kind of pride.

You learn to move like you’re underwater. Every task like a current fighting against you, the commode that won’t fit through the door, the patient who sobs while you change her, the emergency bell that starts ringing the moment your hands are full. You are running a race where the finish line keeps moving. Like wearing magnets that attract everything, and somehow, you can’t get it off and carry it home.

You stay behind, finishing notes long after your shift is over because if it isn’t documented, it didn’t happen. The senior nurses finish their shifts on time, but their patients never seem as happy as yours.

Three months in, you often don’t manage to take breaks. When you finally eat, you notice the other nurses eating healthily, just like you. It’s a surprise, considering how unwell they look.

You feel overwhelmed. Yet, you still help a geriatric patient to the toilet. She tells you the other nurses refuse to help her, insisting she must use a bedpan. You assure her that you’d never do that. Thirty minutes pass as you get her out of bed. Her body is stiff, but you tell her it’s OK and to take as much time as she needs. You don’t rush. You stay kind.

The call bell grows louder, calling for you. It’s the patient in pain, wondering why you haven’t come yet.

I wish she knew how much my leg hurts, the patient thinks.

A searing pain shoots up your left leg. You finish helping the elderly lady, trying to ignore it. It’s just dehydration, you tell yourself, but the ache persists.

Another patient is calling for you. He’s nauseous, asking why you haven’t checked his blood pressure as promised.

If only she understood how I felt.

As you prepare the pain medication, dizziness rolls in, and it feels as though you might vomit. You steady yourself for less than a second, then carry on.

The other sisters don’t ask you what is wrong. We nurses don’t have time for that. The elderly lady on the toilet calls; she’s finished and wants to be helped back to bed, but you’re still dealing with the urgent matter of treating pain.

If she knew what it felt like to be stuck like this she wouldn’t be so undignified.

Two years in, another nurse watches you stay late again. “I used to be you,” she says.  Not kindly. “Now I give twenty percent.” She says it like she’s describing a medical condition. “That’s the only way you won’t burn out.”

You took the advice and have learned to prioritize, no longer working to prove you care. You’re safer in emergencies, you always take your breaks, go home on time, and take it home with you less.

But patients are dissatisfied.

They wish you could understand their suffering, that you could feel their pain. Frustration mounts as you sense their urge growing stronger:

Feel how it feels. Have empathy.

Each day, the unspoken pleas of the patients stick to everything. The demand for understanding suffocates you. You feel it in the ache of your limbs, the dizziness that pulls at the edges of your vision when you stand too quickly. At first, you mistook it for caring too much. But as your compassion fatigues, it only gets worse.

Fifteen years as a nurse. Forty-two years old, and you can barely walk without feeling out of breath. You wish the patients and their families could understand how it feels to be you. Your legs swell, aching constantly. You can’t keep up with the younger nurses, and their judgment makes your teeth feel heavy. They’ll soon see what it’s like. 

Thirty years as a nurse. You’ve been admitted to hospital, you’ve fallen behind on your mortgage, and gone on statutory sick pay. Strong antibiotics drip through your veins while your legs weep yellow and green pus that smells like rotting onions. You’ve developed an embolism in your lung. High-flow oxygen burns your nose.

The doctors say it’s because you’ve been immobile.

You wish they’d understood how much it hurts.

Your nurse isn’t helpful. You’ve asked for pain relief, but she never came back. If only she understood, you think. 

She’d never treat me like this if she knew.