I am not a nurse. I am a high school teacher who has taught many future nurses. I am also the mother of a nurse.
My daughter, as it turns out, is a very strong person. We raised her on a ranch where she endured two older brothers and many episodes of ranch tragedy. These included abandoned baby goats and sheep that we desperately tried to save. Sometimes we were successful, but sometimes we were not. She witnessed the effects of coyote attacks, snake bites and bitter cold weather that struck shortly after shearing, killing much of the herd. It must have been this life that made her so strong. Apparently, it takes a very strong person to be a nurse.
I remember one day when she called us while she was still in nursing school. She told us a story that was so real to us that I still feel like I went through it with her. She had seen many unpleasant things and had learned how to be strong, but this one still hit her hard.
A woman who was six months pregnant came to the hospital because she was having pain. After a few hours of trying to save the baby, they knew that the child had died and the mother would now have to give birth to a dead baby. This baby had been eagerly anticipated as the parents had not been able to have children yet. The pregnancy was the answer to many prayers and when the child died in the uterus, the couple was crushed. The poor woman suffered through the birth process without the reward of the cry of a baby at the end of the process. Instead, the dead baby was whisked away to the morgue.
After a few hours of grieving, the mother decided that she wanted to have a Christening Service with the child. The minister was called and my daughter, a student nurse at the time, and another student nurse were instructed to go down to the morgue and retrieve the dead baby. Further, she was to dress her up in a cute, little dress that the father had gone out to buy for her. It was the last dress that Daddy was ever going to get to buy for his daughter.
My daughter arrived at the morgue, took a deep breath and entered. The staff brought her the dead baby girl, wrapped up in a little sheet, and she took it to a nearby table. The other student nurse began to cry softly as my daughter carefully unwrapped the baby. The baby was covered in skin that was sloughing off and it was cold…very cold. My daughter gathered all of her strength, but the other student nurse was now sobbing next to her. Finally, she turned to her friend and told her to leave. It was hard enough without a sobbing chorus beside her.
The baby’s loose skin sloughed off in her hands as she handled it. Taking deep breaths and doing her best to control her emotions, she gingerly slid the baby’s arms into the sleeves and finished dressing her. She wrapped the baby in a pink baby blanket and carried her back to the grieving mother’s room. The parents collapsed in deep emotional sobs as they unwrapped the baby and saw her in her beautiful dress. After a few moments, they calmed down and the minister began the Christening. When the minister finished, the parents held the baby and caressed her little face as they cried and held onto each other. Finally, they handed her over to my daughter, in final recognition that nothing would bring the baby girl back to life. The sobbing followed my daughter out the door and down the hall to the elevator on the way back to the morgue. The other nurses looked up at her as she passed them then quickly looked down, knowing that she was carrying the grief of the sobbing couple down the hall.
Even after all that my daughter had experienced at the ranch, this one was different.
