It’s been a long day, starting at 4 am. It’s now 10:30, and the lights are dimmed in our little ER room. The nurse dressed in blue, pushing anti-nausea medication into the IV, is the husband of a veteran nurse I work with upstairs. He teases his patient that he’ll bring her ice chips only because she’s a friend of Katrina, who is a friend of his wife.
I’d rather be home in bed, if I had to choose right now.
But Mary, whose excruciating headaches have overtaken her again, is my inspiration. She’s resting her head on her arm, her elbow propped on the side rail of the ER bed. She’s okay now, with the pain medication.
Recently, I stopped at her house to decompress about work.
I babble for awhile, collapsed on her couch in her immaculate living room.
Mary listens and changes channels.
Sometimes I think I’m going to lose my mind, I tell her.
Mary, who knows the key parts of my story, comes up out of her recliner. She shakes her finger at me.
“Do you think, Katrina….DO YOU THINK,” she hollers at me, “that God’s going to put you somewhere where you’re going to lose your mind?”
She has no mercy on my whining. She pushes me forward and reminds me that God is bigger than my perceived problems.
“The one word God doesn’t want to hear us say is ‘can’t’,” she tells me.
He brings the ice chips.
“Ooo, yum,” she says.
I would like to say that I’m here because of my strength and compassion.
But I’m actually here because of hers.