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.

Good Morning

This kid is HIV positive. He is in a wheelchair. He has muscle problems and speech problems and vision problems. He was adopted by a foster mother who brought him back after a month because she couldn't do it. And every morning- EVERY morning- he wakes up with a smile. "I have a house and food and school and people that love me...my life is good," he says, and he means it, as he starts to sing along with the radio.

4am

It's 4am, we are literally in the middle of this guy's chemo. I'm checking orders, vital signs, and blood return on his central line. I'm changing fluids and medicating for nausea. The girl in the room next door is crying. My patient sighs. "Are you ok?" I ask, checking his monitor and his lines. "She sounds like she's in pain," he nods his head toward their shared wall. "I hope she's ok." He looks worried. He certainly has no shortage of things to worry about, yet he's worried about her. When you've lost a little faith in humanity, you can sometimes find it in the middle of the night, in the corner of the hospital.

Blink

"I wish you knew me before," she said to me one night, while she could still speak. I do too. I've seen pictures. She was stunning. She taught preschool. She just got married. She had headaches. She came to us, a brain tumor took over, and her regression began: her ability to walk, get out of bed, go to the bathroom left one at a time. In the end she lay in bed, eyes wide and scared, voice gone. Her mom never leaves her side. Her baby has become her baby once again. Her mom writes each letter of the alphabet on a plain piece of paper, clearly, in rows. She holds the paper in front of her daughter and points slowly to each letter, one at a time. My patient blinks when she wants her mom to stop and her mom records the letter. The letters blend together. We insert spaces where they're needed. It is in this manner she spells out what she needs, what she's thinking. HELPME. DONTLETMEDIE. ICANTDOTHISANYMORE. IWISHYOUDIDNTHAVETOSEEMETHISWAY. IMSORRY. It's tedious and time consuming and heart breaking. One letter at a time.