The fusion center at the hospital felt like another world. Red liquid (which has been nicknamed Red Devil) hung from IV poles like lifelines. Solemn faces were buried in phones, books, and tablets, silently marking time.
“Have you been here before, honey?” a nurse asked me. Her shirt had the word ONCOLOGY on the back. “I don’t see you in our system.”
“No, first time.”
“Let me get you registered. Are you a cancer patient?”
Outside this room, the C word is avoided, but here, it is spoken freely, and it’s jarring.
“No, I’m here for an antibiotic IV.”
My doctor sent me there with a leg infection to ward off a hospital stay. But he didn’t prepare me for what I walked into.
A man in his sixties caught my attention. Seated next to his wife, the Red Devil drained into his arm while she hunched over and scrolled on her phone. His mask covered his mouth but I could see enough of his face to see his grim expression.
“Okay, thank you.”
After I was registered, the nurse told me to take a seat in any of the dark-colored recliners. I chose one next to a seventy-something-year-old man I’ll call Larry.
Larry wore ear buds and talked on the phone a lot over the next two hours. He didn’t mention that he was receiving a transfusion of some type as he talked about football and asked how the other people were doing.
“Would you like a ham or turkey sandwich?” a nurse asked him.
“It doesn’t matter,” Larry said. “I’ll take whatever you’ve got.”
“Turkey it is,” said the nurse, handing him a boxed lunch.
Later, when a nurse asked how the sandwich tasted, he expressed gratitude for it.
“It’s great. When you grew up the way we did, you are grateful for anything you got.”
I’d opted for the ham sandwich and it wasn’t much to write home about. Two thinly sliced pieces of ham on bread. The boxed lunch did come with a packet of mayo, which helped. But I knew what Larry meant. Nobody owes anybody a free lunch, so when you get one, it tastes pretty good going down.
“If I don’t make it to coffee Monday morning,” Larry said to someone on the phone, “tell the guys to pray for me.”
That warmed and hurt my heart at the same time.
Every fifteen minutes or so, Larry asked nurses for an exchange of blankets. And they happily brought him a fresh warm one and laid it over him. His thankfulness was contagious.
A fifty-something-year-old woman took a seat across from me and quickly fell asleep under her warm blanket after a nurse started her IV. She dozed for the next hour or so, then chatted with a nurse about how her port had been removed after it got twisted.
None of the patients talked to each other. I don’t know why. We sat far enough apart to have a little privacy but close enough to hear most of what they said to the staff or as they chatted on the phone.
If Larry hadn’t been so busy on the phone, I may have broken protocol and asked him about his Monday morning coffee group.
An elderly man on the other side of me coughed every few minutes while scrolling on his phone.
A woman next to him asked a nurse why the sound wasn’t up on the TV. Apparently, she wanted to hear the HGTV program so she could know which house the prospective buyers were considering.
A twenty-something-year-old woman I walked in with now sat across the room with a liquid I couldn’t see draining into her arm. She came prepared with a giant handbag of activities and snacks.
Over the next two hours, the room turned over. After Larry left, a woman chose his recliner. She was an anti-Larry, barking orders at the nurses, telling them to put a stat on her labs and making sure they knew she worked in the same healthcare system they did. I’m not sure why that mattered. Maybe she was just scared. Fear can bring out some of our ugliest qualities. The nurses seemed to take it all in stride.
Illness was the great equalizer in the room. We weren’t male or female, rich or poor, one nationality or the other, young or old, friendly or unfriendly or fat or skinny. We were just people who came for a shot of hope. And it left a deep impression on me while inspiring me at the same time.
The nurses were the heart of that room, infusing it with life, personality and love. They reminded me that even small acts — a warm blanket, a simple meal, or a few kind words — can nudge the world in the right direction, one hurting soul at a time.
