Oh God…
But that’s not the only thing that’s making it hard to breathe, because there’s also the bomb Dr. Franks dropped during my introductory interview earlier, as if it were just a pretty firework rocket.
Damn, how am I supposed to do this?
The lymph nodes on my neck are normal in size. The ones in my armpits too. I get up and feel my groin. Also no swelling, all good. I note that in the journal as well, then I strap on the blood pressure cuff and start the device. The familiar humming fills the room, the cuff winding tighter and tighter around my upper arm.
Outside, someone thunders down the hallway. ‘Oof, that was close,’ I hear Olive curse.
When I walked past her open door earlier, I was able to glance into her room. Not a single box in sight, not a speck of dust, but instead a perfectly lined-up orchid collection on the windowsill, a flawlessly made bed, and pictures hanging at perfectly measured distances from one another. She’s the only one of the five of us whose room is already fully set up—however she managed that.
The values appear on the device’s display: blood pressure 120 over 80. I smile, satisfied.
‘Nyla, are you in there?’ Olive’s voice reaches me muffled through the door.
‘Yeah, come in.’ I jot the numbers down in my journal and stow the device in the drawer.
The door swings open. Even though Olive is wearing simple jeans, she looks as if she has just floated down from the catwalk to join us other merely mortal women here on earth. With growing unease, she scans the construction site that is my room at the moment.
In the light of the bare bulb that’s been provisionally mounted on the ceiling, it looks barren. A dozen moving boxes are stacked in the corners. Only the bed is already made, and the table where I’m currently sitting, carrying out my routine examinations and trying to keep my fear of everything that awaits me in the coming days in check.
Olive rolls up her sleeves. ‘Need help unpacking?’
Tomorrow ,she has her first shift in the intensive care unit at Halifax Harbor Hospital. ‘No, I’ve got it, thanks. You should go to bed, you’ve got a tough day ahead of you tomorrow.’
Shaking her head, she goes over to my suitcase, which lies open on the floor next to the bed. ‘You really need to hang up your tops, otherwise they’ll be full of creases.’ With determination, she grabs an orange knit sweater.
Wrinkles in clothes are, in my world, like perfectly furnished shared rooms from the get-go: incidental. To her, though, they seem to mean a lot, far more than they did back when we were at uni together five years ago. With infinite care she hangs the sweater on a hanger and lovingly smooths it out.
‘This orange is great, you should wear it more often,’ she says, opening my closet door. Pure shock suddenly takes over her expression. ‘My God, no, this won’t do.’
Without waiting for my reaction, she storms out of the room. I step up to the closet and look inside, but I can’t figure out what just shocked her so much.
A little later she comes back with a bucket of water, cleaning supplies, rubber gloves, and a rag. ‘Sit down, I’ll take care of this quickly,’ she says solicitously. ‘You’ve had a long day.’
She’s right about that, but I still can’t just let her clean my wardrobe, which isn’t even dirty to begin with. ‘I can just do it myself tomorrow.’
‘It’s no problem, I have to wind down before I can sleep anyway.’ Unfazed, she pulls on the gloves, wrings out the rag, and scrubs the top shelf clean. ‘So, tell me, how was the ER?’
I take a shirt out of the suitcase and spread it out on the bed. ‘It was nice to be able to help again,’ I answer, because that’s something good, and that’s what I want to focus on.
‘You should smooth that out properly before you fold it.’ Olive points at the shirt and then turns to the next shelf in the wardrobe. ‘Do you think you can handle the stress at work?’
I have to. I want to. More than anything. ‘I can do it,’ I say, but I can hear the doubt in my words.
She wrings out the cloth, her questioning gaze finding me. ‘Then what is it?’
‘What do you mean?’ I turn back to the shirt and fold the right side inward.
‘Your forehead is one big crater landscape—you really have to be careful, or those wrinkles will stay—and the corners of your mouth are drooping pretty badly.’ Olive rises gracefully from her crouch. Not a single one of the droplets of water dripping from the cloth reaches her clothes. ‘So, what’s going on?’
With a sigh, I sink down onto the bed. ‘I prepared for working in the emergency room.’ For weeks I worked out strategies to cope with the stress.
‘But?’ My roommate’s cheeks flush softly, that’s how hard she’s scrubbing the wardrobe.
‘But now I’m not only supposed to work in the emergency room, I’m supposed to take part in a two-week program where doctors also ride along in the ambulance.’ When Dr. Franks told me earlier that I’m expected to report for duty at the emergency dispatch center first thing tomorrow morning, for a moment I thought I couldn’t breathe.
I’m not prepared for what could happen out there. I have no idea what I’ll be confronted with.
