Who Needs Who

Today I had an orientee--she's new to our shift. It's my fourth day in a row. I charged all weekend. Wiz went on vacation without telling me. Everybody else knew. Typical. I was sent home on call at 11, but stayed to give my patient an enema (I didn't think the nurse taking over from me would give it to him, and I was pretty sure the night nurse had lied about his stool). I've decided that my instincts about almost everything are dead on and that I'm going to pay attention to them.
I liked this one--I like them all. She's my age, a single mom with two teenagers, left handed, working on her masters. I took her to lunch after my shift. As I walked through the halls of the hospital to the coffee shop, I realized how many connections I've made--it's interesting to see things through someone else's eyes. From the housekeeper to the security guard to the attending to the Serbian girl behind the counter at the shop I do Yoga with, I must have greeted 25 people from the floor to the lobby. I showed her the secret courtyard. It's a beautiful warm day today, and some of the trees in the courtyard, which is more protected from the elements then the rest of the city, are showing signs of spring. A warm little rabbit ran across my path, too on the way in to work. We sat and ate our almond chicken sandwiches. I feel worn to the bone. I can hardly put together a sentence. The only thing stringing my personality together is the adderoll. I haven't had much sleep, and the weekend has been brutal.
"You're going to go insane if you keep working this much overtime," Jay tells me last night.
I saw him last night. I was supposed to see him Saturday night, and I did try. We were supposed to watch Elena together. I went over to his house after work and getting dinner on for the kids. Elena was manic. She's just been weaned. At 21/2. At one point, she lifted up her shirt and showed us her nipples. "Are you hungry?" she asked us. "Do you want some milk? My titties have milk for you!"
"No thank you," we replied cheerfully.
Aackkk. I can safely say Lilly has never done that. Christ on a crutch.
Hali had thoughtfully given her a four hour nap that afternoon, right before she came over to the house. Bitch. So Elena had lots of energy. She was wearing purple striped tights and fuzzy feathery purple slippers and a turtleneck. She was running around like feral cat trapped in a chinese restaurant. She looked like a doctor Seuss character, like a little "Who". We finally got her to lie down at 11. We looked at the stars outside the window. She wanted to know their names. I surprised myself. I know a lot of star names, and constellations. I told her about Orion, because he was the easiest to see. Pointed out his belt and his sword and his dogs. Then Jay got her a bottle and she lay down between us and we patted her back. She loves Jay. She loves him so much.
And then she reached over and grabbed for my hair in the dark and wrapped it around her tiny hand, just like Lilly used to do, when she was little. And all the sudden I was completely overwhelmed. I thought about all the lost years, about all the times I would lie down with Lilly, impatient, just wanting her to fall asleep, and how she would clutch my hair and it would hurt and I would feel sort of annoyed. I bought her a blanket with fringe, so that she would have something to wrap around her hand when she fell asleep. I thought about how so many of the things I went through with my children when they were little just seemed like drudgery, just sheer drudgery. I mean, I loved them but God it was hard. It felt so unreal. And I remembered the feel of their little bodies and how they would crawl into bed with me, even if I'd put them in their own beds to start with. And I'd lie there in the old apartment in Miami, listening to the traffic roar by, smelling gasoline and jasmine and rain through the latticed windows. Oh, I missed them so. I missed them so.
And then I thought about my own kids at home now, here, in Little Dixie. And here was this little girl, who I like a lot, actually. But she's not my little girl. This is not a family I have been offered entry into: these are not people who really care about me, who in fact see me as anything but a comfort. Like a chair maybe, or a nice well-behaved pet. And I'm trying to get over the lying, but why do I have to? The time is precious. My own children, who I am essential to, are more important. I am the only adult in their world who has taken the time and made the commitment to be essential to my children, and boy do I suck at it. I'm so flaky and inconstant. So I got up, put on my shoes, and went home. Drove back through the night. Got home at midnight.
Lilly looked surprised. She was sitting downstairs, watching The Office. "Why are you back?" she asks. "It was okay for you to go. We're good."
"I know. I just missed you." I told her what happened.
"Oh, mommie, it's okay." she said.
"Go to sleep, Mom," Nick said. "You look really tired."
"Are you guys going to stay up?"
Yes, they'd rented movies.
I felt sort of silly, listening to them as I fell asleep, watching the movies, laughing. They're so self-sufficient.
But at 2am, my door opened, and Lilly came in. She wrapped her arms around me.
"You're a good mom." she whispered, then she fell asleep. All five feet nine inches one hundred and forty pounds of her unshowered post basketball game self. She pulled the good feather pillow out from underneath me--she likes the way it smells--she thought I was asleep.
Oh well, at least she didn't pull my hair.
That's my 1/2 hour.