Camp Nurse Read Free

been young and idealistic, too. At forty-four years of age, I still felt young. Well, at least I was still idealistic. Though it scared me to think I’d be on my own without a doctor on hand and with the closest hospital a half-hour drive away, I reminded myself that I was an experienced nurse. I had handled many emergencies over my long career.
C’mon, you can do this
, I told myself. “Okay, I’m in,” I said.
Bring it on!
    As I steered the car into the parking lot, I took a deep breath (of
fresh
air!) and readied myself for the plunge into The Great Outdoors.

2
BAND-AIDS, CALAMINE, AND A CAPPUCCINO TO GO
    Camp Na-Gee-La was situated on an irregularly shaped piece of land made up of hills and valleys. At its hilly centre was a flagpole, from which a path sloped down to the waterfront. The mess hall was on another hill, and the infirmary was located on the highest hill of all. By the time I finished dealing with Zack’s injury, it was late evening. Mike showed me to my new home, a room at the back of the infirmary. My kids would stay there with me for the night. Tomorrow, after all the other campers had arrived and camp officially began, they would join up with their cabin groups. I unpacked my things, organizing them on the wooden shelves provided, and tried to settle down my kids. We’d missed dinner, but I had brought some fruit and crackers with me, and we munched on those. They were excited but tired too, and soon fell asleep together on one of the two narrow cots in my room.
    I sat down for a moment on the other cot to review some of my reasons for getting involved in this adventure in the first place. Camp fees can be expensive and I liked the idea of bartering my skills in exchange for them, but my real motivation was to get a ticket to the world of camp. It was too late for me to be a camper but this might be the next best thing. “Camp nurse” would also be my cover to spy on my own kids. I don’t think ofmyself as an overprotective parent, but I admit I can get involved (too involved?) in my kids’ worlds. I am the kind of mother who knew the adventures of Thomas the Tank Engine, and those of his sidekicks, Percy, Henry, James, and Edward, too. During the Pokémon craze, it was not every mother who could rhyme off the secret powers of Charmeleon, Squirtle, and Blastoise, but I could. Now, at camp, I could be on the inside and get the scoop on my kids’ secret lives, while keeping a respectful, unobtrusive distance, of course. I could be a fly on the cabin wall. They would hardly even notice I was there.
    Something else intrigued me about camp. I longed to learn the secrets of the successful campers. It was much easier for me to understand why someone might
not
like camp, what with the non-stop, exhausting activities, the noisy silliness, the bothersome bugs – not to mention the lack of books, solitude, and quiet time. I wanted to see for myself why so many loved it.
    I went to check out the infirmary, down the hall. It consisted of a waiting room with a couch, a few plastic chairs, and a rattling old refrigerator. There were two other rooms, one with four beds for overnight patients and the other with an examining table and a desk. I took stock. There wasn’t much in the way of equipment and the supplies looked like they’d fallen off the back of the proverbial truck. I found a dusty stethoscope, an antique blood pressure machine that belonged in a museum, a bottle of Tylenol long past its expiry date, a box of Band-Aids, a few bottles of rubbing alcohol, antiseptic, and a mystery bottle, unlabelled. All in all, this was not enough to supply a decent first-aid kit, let alone provide for an emergency. There was no airway (a tubular device to assist with breathing), no oxygen tank, no iv equipment or intravenous drugs. I had no medications to treat a seizure, a cardiac arrest, an asthma attack, or anaphylactic shock. The only thing remotely amusing about this situation was an object I discovered