a note to the nurses out there

But for the nurses turning me, I lay still with an unstable spine for 10 days. Excruciating in many ways. Enlightening in more. During those days my vulnerable body was tended to like a newborn. Fed, bathed, watered, changed. Any dignity wiped away.

Responsibilities erased, I observed, from an obscure angle, with great interest, the nurses on the High Dependency Unit. The work they did. The demands placed upon them. The selflessness.

One nurse berated me regularly for my foul language. Vivian, a rotund figure of a woman, with a jovial Jamaican accent, was different. I told her. She replied, smiling, ‘I’ve been where you’ve been.’