Some of you may have seen Ali on "60 Minutes" a few weeks ago. She's one neat nurse and here's what happened to her down on Ward D just a few days ago . . .
It was a busy evening with tube feeds and babies who wouldn't eat and more tears than I usually provoke in a single shift (theirs, unfortunately, not mine), but I'm sitting here and it's nearly midnight and I feel less tired than I've felt in months.
There's something about that place that fills me. It's the man with a big bandage on his jaw helping the woman in the next bed to adjust the tube in her nose, holding it carefully for her while the last drops of her feeding flow through it. It's the babies being passed around from one set of willing arms to the next while mama takes a much-needed break. It's the faces taking shape to cover lifetimes of shame and the man who was never allowed to go to school because he would frighten the other children, sitting on his bed, carefully printing letters over and over as he learns to write.
It's all that and a hundred more moments, carefully stored away for the times I start to lose sight of why we're here, buried under the weight of yet another load of laundry and yet another night with far too little sleep.
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