Savasana

I'm in my hot yoga class. 90 minutes. 105 degrees. Set your intention. I watch my face in the mirror, sweaty, flushed, focused. I picture his dusky face, swollen, putty-like, unmoving. Find your breath. His mother is sobbing in the front bench, a rumpled ball of tissue clenched in each fist. I hunch over awkwardly. She hugs me tight and trembly around my neck. She cries in quick Spanish into me. Find your balance. His dad, in his best suit, thanks me for coming. Use your core. His brother, his bone marrow donor, stands by the door, his spitting image. Find your breath. I cry. It's ok; no one notices. My tears fall into my sweat, and it all drips down to the floor. And in the end I'm laying in a puddle of my own salt. Savasana. Corpse pose. Remember your intention.

Tough Crowd

She has Down's Syndrome and Acute Myeloid Leukemia. This girl's personality fills a room. I walk in at the start of my shift. She's mad at me because I've told her she can't eat. "Leave me alone!" she pouts at me. "Get outta my face!" I try for a smile, "Can we be friends?" Silence. She rolls her eyes at me like a proper teenager. "Ok...guess I'll just be your nurse tonight." Tough crowd.

A Little Bit Louder Now

She just had her central line placed. I'm drawing her labs for the first time. She is SCREAMING at the top of her lungs, her face six inches from mine. "Does it hurt?" I ask. "No." "Are you scared?" I ask. "No." "So why are you screaming?" "I don't know," she manages before she starts screaming again. It's going to be a long night.

All My Bags Are Packed, I'm Ready to Go

These are the things I think while caring for him after he's gone: How he would throw his notebook from the bed to the floor and wait patiently for me to pick it up and hand it back to him before he threw it again. and again and again. Endearing tenacity. How he would beat his hand to his heart, his way of saying i love you. Sweet and poignant. How just hours ago a trio of nurses sang Feliz Navidad, loudly and poorly, because that's the only song we know in Spanish and we wanted to make him happy. How he shooed us out of the room, reaching instead for dad. And how now he is cold and unmoving. I look at him, blurry through tears that have collected but refused to fall. The dusky shade of my purple nail polish nearly lost in the dusky purple of his skin. I laugh. I have to. Because if I don't laugh, I have no idea what kind of noises will come pouring out of me. I laugh until the tears come and streak down my cheeks. I write his name on a tag and place it on his toe. I tie his hands together across his abdomen. I tie his feet together at his ankles. We take him to the morgue and return to his empty room. I watch as his mother puts his belongings into a giant bag, one by one. His father pushes his empty wheelchair slowly down the hall toward the exit. The wheels squeak as they turn, the chair strangely and newly weightless. They have taken their time and collected everything, now must leave behind the only thing that matters. This is hard. Walking home the sun was shining and it was nicer than it's been in a long time. I know that has nothing to do with anything, I just think it's a nice way to remember the end.