Promise to Cherish Read Free

then returned to tapping two old checker pieces together. She patted his head as she passed him. Christine walked over to the office in the corner of the room where she would prepare to hand out the morning round of medications.
    “We had to restrain Rodney a few hours after our shift started. He went after Floyd.” Millicent Smythe, one of the ward’s night-shift nurses, was writing in the patient logbook in the office. Her lips were pasty and unpainted, though twelve hours ago they’d been as red as Christine’s. Dark circles framed her brown eyes and her voice carried a hint of exhaustion.
    “What? Floyd? He wouldn’t hurt a flea.” Christine said.
    “Rodney said that Floyd was cussing at him. Rodney had all of them riled up—acting like the big cheese. It put a wrench in the whole night. Mr. Pricket even had a difficult time with him.”
    Mr. Pricket was one of the oldest and most experienced attendants in all of Hudson River. Surely Rodney’s latest outburst would finally get him transferred to Ryan Hall, where the truly violent and disturbed patients were kept.
    “I know what you’re thinking.” Millicent looked over at her and raised a dark brown eyebrow. “Ryan Hall.”
    “Aren’t you?”
    The other nurse shrugged. “They are even more crowded than we are and there are injuries weekly—both the patients and the staff. If anyone needs more help instead of more patients, it’s them.”
    Just before Millicent left she called over her shoulder. “Have an attendant check on Wayne and Sonny when you get a minute. Wayne was agitated last night. Oh, and the laundry is behind—again.”
    Christine nodded and hustled to get started handing out medications. The patients who were able lined up for their medications, which she handed through the open Dutch door. The attendants helped the less competent patients line up. She took a tray of medications out to the remaining patients who weren’t able to form a line or were bedridden. This took some time, since each had to drink down the medications in front of her so she could check inside their mouths—under their tongues and in the pockets of their cheeks.
    When she was nearly half through with administering the medications, the attendants began taking the patients in shifts to the cafeteria to eat breakfast. When a patient in the other hall needed an unscheduled electroconvulsive therapy, often referred to as shock therapy, she was pulled in to assist since Nurse Minton was busy with an ill patient who had pulled his IV from his arm.
    When she finally returned to the corner office in the day room her logbook was still open. Quickly Christine documented the lethargy of one patient she’d noticed earlier in the day and the aggressiveness of another. She reviewed the schedule for the rest of the day: more shock therapy, hydrotherapy for calming a few patients, and numerous catheterizations for the patients who refused to use the toilet. How would she keep up with it all?
    She didn’t have time to dwell and carefully picked up the tray of medications she needed to finish. Christine was only a step out of the office when Wally approached her.
    “Hey, nurse, have a smoke for me? Have a smoke for me?” Though his words were still slurred she was glad he had come out of his stupor from earlier that morning. “Come on, have a smoke for me?”
    “Wally, you know I’m not going to give you any cigarettes.” She smiled at him. It was difficult to have a conversation with the men when they stood nude in front of her. She had trained herself to treat them as if they were fully clothed individuals and would look them directly in their eyes.
    “Aw, come on, nurse, I know where you keep ’em,” he whispered loudly, stepping closer to her as she closed and locked the Dutch door. “What if I tell ya you’ve got some nice gams? You’re a real Queen ’o Sheba! Prettiest nurse here.”
    “I don’t smoke, Wally.” It was only a half lie; she did smoke on