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I was tired, irritable, and I’d had a bad day at work. Or, well…night.
I had a man that I worked with that liked to tease me mercilessly, and I was fairly sure that he was doing some bad shit at work, yet I couldn’t ever catch him doing said bad shit.
So, I worked with the asshole who thought it was the greatest thing in the world to grab my ass and knock my stack of sorted mail off the fucking table like a goddamn child.
“You okay, dear?”
I smiled at the elderly woman that volunteered with me on Fridays. I was coming up the walkway from the parking lot to my second job, although this was one was unpaid.
“Yes, ma’am.” I smiled weakly. “I’m just tired. It was a long night at work.”
She smiled at me, and it was a little wobbly, too.
“My Judson has been gone for two months now,” she said. “Sometimes I wake up in the mornings, make him coffee, and then remember that he’s not here anymore. Today was one of those days.”
My problems instantly seemed small in comparison.
Mrs. Castillo, Rona, was a sweet old woman and had been volunteering with me every Friday for what felt like years. Two months ago, her husband of sixty-two years died while in his sleep next to her, and since then, she’d been carrying on. But she’d been doing it like she was half a person—as if half her soul was missing.
And honestly, maybe it was.
Maybe when her husband had died, that half of her soul went with him, and now she was living, but not really living.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Castillo.” I patted her papery skin. “Would you like to come over to our house for dinner this weekend?”
She looked away and started to shuffle forward.
“No, honey. But thank you. I’m going to spend my weekend with my sister-in-law. We’re two peas in a pod lately.”
I looked away and kept pace with her, not separating from her until we got into the hospital.
When she reached the reception desk where she volunteered, I waved goodbye and continued on my way.
When I arrived, the first person I saw started in.
“We got a new one,” the nurse at station two said. “He’s in room four. He was in a motorcycle accident four days ago and in a coma. The swelling on his brain is going up, and they’re not sure whether he’s going to be able to ever wake up. They’ve done surgery on him two times now. He’s also got a scary blood condition that’s keeping them from doing any more surgery. The doctor is recommending to the family that they come in and say goodbye.”
That made my heart hurt.
I’d been volunteering at the hospital in Longview, Texas for over four years now. I knew when I was young that I wanted to make a difference in people’s lives.
I’d originally set out to do that by becoming a nurse. I’d been in school for it for two years when I decided that nursing wasn’t for me. However, my desire to change peoples’ lives never waned.
Therefore, I started volunteering.
On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I volunteered for three hours a day after my shift at the post office.
On Mondays, I sat with tiny little babies who didn’t have families, or whose families couldn’t come to visit during the day due to work, in the NICU.
On Wednesdays, I went to rehab and sat with elderly patients, encouraged them, and was ultimately the friend that they needed during a trying time in their life.
On Fridays, which was today, I went to the ICU. There, I sat with coma patients. I talked to them, read them stories, and sometimes just watched TV with them so they didn’t have to be alone.
I gave the nurse a thumbs up and headed to room number four, but stopped halfway and turned back around. “What’s his name?”
“Rhys Rivera.”
The name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place where, exactly, I’d heard it before.
Moments later I walked in, and I saw a man with really dark hair that was buzzed off on one side. His face was wrapped in white gauze, and there was a slightly red spot on the top of his head, with a drain running out the side.
It was halfway filled with a watery red drainage that made my stomach turn.
Which had been one of the reasons I left nursing school.
I became queasy at the sight of blood.
And not even a little bit. A lot.
I found out the hard way, four hours into my shift, when the nurse I was shadowing for the day made me help change a dressing on a bed sore.
I’d helped pull the gauze off and then was hit with not only a horrid, gut-tightening smell but also a line of thick, viscous blood.
All of the blood had drained from my face, and I had to take evasive measures to keep myself from face-planting into the old woman’s ass.
