Ghosts
Once you work in a unit long enough, each room has a memory, or two, or thirty. Each room has times you loved, and a patient that warmed your heart. Each room has a story you are proud of, a patient you know you helped. Sometimes all it takes is supporting a person on a terrible day, being present, listening. Each room has some ghosts as well. Ghosts of could have and should have, of the nurses and the people we used to be. Less jaded, less weary versions of ourselves exist in these stories. Ghosts of patients for sure, the ones we carry with us by choice and those that linger uninvited.
Bed one is regret, drama, and things I wish I knew as a baby nurse.
Bed five is too much. Death happens back-to-back-to-back in bed five. Once it starts, it has to finish. I declared it silly and superstitious years ago. I have changed my opinion; bed five has not changed. Bed five was uncaring then and remains so now.
Bed six is youth. Patients my age always end up in bed six. It is a young woman who we could not save. It was hopeless from the start, regardless we tried. We failed. Bed six is another young woman with that too familiar story. Bed six is a young man that lived. He walked up to death’s door and camped there for weeks, but somehow made it back. Bed six is hit or miss.
Bed eight is the worst, most entitled patient family. It is signs on the door not to enter, lest you disturb their schedule. It is complete disappointment with your management and their spinelessness. It is a little less faith in humanity.
Bed eleven is your first super sick admission in those early days. It is the mama nurse that said, “You are going to do this tonight. It is going to happen; it might as well happen while I am here.” What would you say to that new nurse version of you? “Run?” “Stay?” You are not sure.
Bed fourteen is the “good old days.“ It is memories of crazy shifts with your dream team of coworkers. Most of the dream team has left. You have remained, at times looking for the exit. We’ll always have bed fourteen though.
Bed sixteen is a feeling. Now and then, there’s a nurse voice in your head, a whisper on your shoulder, a deja vu feeling. It’s disconcerting, unnerving, and some days life-saving. Maybe it was a ghost of bed sixteen that whispered in your ear to check one extra time. Whatever it was that made you check again; it saved your patient’s life. To that ghost, you can be thankful.
Bed seventeen is the curse. A story that you do not want to remember. You’ve heard it enough times, told in such detail by those there, you might as well have been. You can play the scene out in your mind. As a preceptor, you tell new nurses that story. It scares them, but it will make them better. We let bed seventeen keep its curse; we pass it down. It was hard times that we came through, who knows if it made us stronger or smarter. It did make us more aware, of that we are sure.
Bed eighteen is a problem for you because five years have passed and you still get it mixed up with bed seventeen. Face-palm.
Bed twenty-two is a fun day with a sweet patient. It is joking with her at 1800, then finding her unconscious at 1821. For her, it is a ruptured aneurysm combined with the phrases, “Incompatible with life” and “We cannot do anything.“ For you, it is a bout of depression. Not to make it your tragedy, you know she had it worse.
Ghosts live in a hospital of what was, what might have been, and what remains. The things that change us or endure-sometimes comforting other times haunting.
So very true.
