The Tired Nurse

Something to soothe the soul...

Anne Compton had been a nurse for 13 years. She’d seen it all in the three hospitals she worked: life, death, sickness, disease, broken limbs, and grieving relatives.

And plenty of each.

She confided in her husband but he was a programmer, a career not known for compassion and empathy. While he appreciated his wife’s concern for the sick and needy, he never could do what she did. Likewise, she couldn’t sit in front of a computer as he did every day.

They say opposites attract. In their case, they were right. Over the years, though, he had learned to show compassion and kindness towards her on days like this.

After the current 12-hour shift, Anne was more than ready to get home and maybe take a long hot bath after supper. There were no grieving relatives at the hospital today, just complainers. They were the worst.

More water.

Where’s my mother’s food?

Can’t anyone help him to the bathroom? What are they paying you for?

The food’s cold and tastes like cardboard.

Normally she blew off complaints from relatives as an unpleasant but necessary part of the job. She understood they were under stress and just spouting off to the nearest person in scrubs. For some reason, though, tonight’s shift was terrible and constant it seemed.

She chatted with her husband about his day and of course, gave a play by play on hers.

“Would you be kind enough to do the dishes tonight, Hon? I’m going to jump in the tub for a bubble bath,” Anne said.

“Absolutely. You just go take as long as you need. And I mean that.”

“You’re so sweet. See you in an hour or two, Love!”

As she ran the water, she was so looking forward to it. Out of habit she checked her phone one last time as she dangled a foot over the filling bath water. Lisa, a co-worker, had texted her.

Anne’s heart sank. “Oh no,” she said out loud. “What now?”

“Sitting down?” Lisa wrote in her first text. Without waiting for a response, Lisa sent a photograph of a sticky note with her comment, ‘Thot you might like to see this. It was stuck to the door of the heart patient in 218.’

Nurse Anne Compton spread the photo with her fingers to enlarge the sticky note:

Miss Anne, You saved my Dad tonight. Thank you.

Thank you.

The soothing warm water would mix well with her tears. She might have to go weeks on those kind words, but there they were, written just when she needed to see them.