Thursday, March 12, 2020

Lazy Lizard

Nell once fell asleep while writing a prescription for paracetamol. She has also dozed off mid-consultation, much to the bewilderment of a patient, following a night shift. When her non-life was consumed by work and overtime, when her stress level tested at the 90th percentile, when she felt guilty for laughing and tasting and swallowing food while patients were suffering, when she was a half-step away from losing her mind, instead of crying or taking it out on her family, she slept.

She'd come home and say hi to her husband. She'd walk to their bedroom and close the door. In her dismay she'd sleep because when people talked about compartmentalizing, wasn't this what they meant? 

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She talks about the time when she almost lost her license. There was a patient they nearly gave the wrong blood to which would have killed him. A simple switch of patients to different beds, no indication of the name mix-up, everything as usual. It wasn't until she checked his name on his wristband that she caught it. The shock in the nurse's face reflected hers and they stared at each other wordlessly, grasping how suddenly their careers could have ended. 

But she tells me such errors happened not infrequently in hospitals and you only hoped that it wouldn't happen to you and your patients, that the nurses or other doctors would catch it. That's how it was. In her words, they saved each others' necks. 

"I go to work every day praying, 'God please don't let me kill anyone.'" 

At her most jaded she thought, "You are not saving people. You are just helping them die."

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Nell is a calm sea. Her voice and hands move in small waves and even her hair in its dry muted blackness is serene. With barely perceptible inflections she speaks about heavy experiences, her low tide voice washing over years of damage and dismay, lending due weight to each pain but never dragging anyone else underneath. I have also noticed that she doesn't let herself give into regret. Perhaps this is why what I would have found burdensome to hear, I find engaging. 

Ann said that we tend to befriend those who are similar to us. It's not a novel idea yet I never thought it applied to me because hadn't I been friends with all sorts of people whose interests I didn't share, whose values weren't aligned with mine, who I both respected and didn't? Even now that I am older, I change how I act and present myself depending on who I'm with to feign similarity. With me there is no "what you see is what you get." Is it a form of falsification and insecurity to manipulate my behavior to match that of others? Or does it simply infer that I don't actually know who I am or want to be? 

What I do know is that around Nell, I like myself. I don't second-guess or cringe over something I say to her weeks ago. The lack of dread or uneasiness about meeting up means there are no fantasies about canceling (if anything, this indicates how absurd my other relationships are). By way of seeing Nell's own measured self-acceptance and my acceptance of her, I've come to stop being preoccupied with how I come across. Suppose being friends with someone just means you feel safe enough to do that. For me, it's a rarity.