Rachel Newton CWA 2009

Creative Writing Awards Winner - 2013

Class of 2013

Rachel Newton ‘13 is a graduate of the University of Connecticut with a Bachelors of Arts in Philosophy and Literature and a Master’s degree in Nursing. A mother of three, she is a burn nurse at Bridgeport Hospital’s Burn Center. She plans on pursuing Yale’s dual nursing program in advanced Psychiatric Nursing and Divinity.

 Listen to Rachel Newton’s Golden as a netcast on Yale’s iTunesU

Transcript of the Reading:

Golden

I considered my patient from a safe distance. A tiny gray woman lay motionless in the bed, her hands clenched tightly above the sheets. Her eyes were open, but unseeing. She didn’t appear to know I was there.

I was a nursing student sent to shadow a hospice nurse, who, faced with a family emergency, had deposited me with an actively dying 94 year old woman. Before I could put my backpack down in the corner of the room, the nurse was gone, calling over her shoulder, “she likes to pray.” Acting as naturally as possible, I conducted a nervous tour of my patient’s room. A collection of saints’ cards sat on the bedside table. A clock ticked somewhere in the background. My patient was clean. Her linens were fresh. 

There were no furrows of pain on her expressionless face. What was I doing here?

I imagined opening lines… “Hello, Mrs. Sullivan. I am the student nurse who will care for you today. Together, I’m sure we can come to terms with your complex yet well-lived life. It’s okay to die, Mrs. Sullivan. Let’s work very hard to bring you to a higher state of acceptance.” On second thought, perhaps, remaining by the dry erase board where the Nurse had penned Caroline! in bright red ink was the superior option. Surely someone would come for me sooner or later. But what if God came for Mrs. Sullivan first? If I did nothing, the Almighty would no doubt punish me by taking her then and there, leaving me to run all over this forgotten labyrinth trying to find someone who knew what to do.

I returned to a study of my patient. I did not want this woman to feel alone in her death, but she didn’t seem to feel particularly alone–or particularly anything. I didn’t want to disturb her or interfere. And I didn’t want to be the nurse caricature who ministered to a lifeless form already gone. I felt I should do something. I just didn’t know what that something was.

Or, perhaps, I did. 

Precautions to the wind, I sat down on her bed and moistened her cracked lips with a little Vaseline from my purse. I attempted to hold her hands and realized that beads—of course, a rosary—were wrapped tightly in and through her fingers. Circulation was probably not a priority under the circumstances; however, skin alterations are always of paramount concern. I began to unwind the beads, at which point the hands sprung to life in the most alarming fashion. She grunted, but her expression remained unchanged. “Will I always be the Lucille Ball of nurses?” I asked God, as I frantically attempted to rewind her beads, not a skill I had acquired at Jewish day school. I chastised myself not just for disturbing her, but for not paying more careful attention to the strand’s pattern. Most likely I had corrupted the ritual, barring her way to heaven forever.

“She likes to pray…” I remembered. She was okay with Sister Janet’s ‘73 rock version of the Our Father. Duly encouraged, it occurred to me that Hail Mary often accompanies the rosary. I began to stumble shortly after, Hail Mary, full of grace… I didn’t want to get it wrong. Was it sweet womb or fruit of sweet womb? She began to thrash around almost vigorously as I deliberated out loud. Thinking quickly, I proceeded to more familiar territory, chanting in Hebrew the solemn prayer for the dead, Yiskodal v’yiskodash shemaye rabah… She nearly threw us both from the bed. 

What had I done to this poor woman? And why was this going so terribly wrong? I did pray then—to my God, my way. Please help me with my bumbling. Please see the worth of my cause, the rightness of my intentions. Half expecting a bass voice to rock the foundations of the nursing home, with a, “Get thee gone, thou shalt never be a nurse,” a wholly different message sounded.

So I sang to her some more.

I began with the lullabies that had rocked my children to sleep. I sang all the Joni Mitchell I knew. And then the Bonnie Raitt. I finished with my gospel choir’s entire repertoire, completing the visit with four rounds of Precious Lord. As I sang, she melted deeper and deeper into the comfort of her bedding. And as we relaxed together, I touched her more—stroking her arm and smoothing her forehead. And it became, in time, a good day to live or die. We stayed there, singing, until the hospice nurse returned, remarking upon the profound sense of peace in the room.

Mrs. Sullivan didn’t die that day. Actually, I have no idea when she passed. As nurses, we travel in such intimate orbits with people we shall never see again. I nearly killed her with my attempts at Catholic prayer, but we found each other, nevertheless, in song and comfort—in the gifts I could give, gifts she was poised to receive. 

The miracle is that our imperfect and limited gifts turn out to be precisely enough. It’s alchemy. When I stopped struggling with my inability to be the alchemist—to bring life, healing, or meaning to the lifeless figure in the bed—I learned instead, that patients, nurses, people, we are not the alchemists, but the gold. 

Thinking of that afternoon– like so many moments in my nursing experience—the desire to serve a patient, so authentic and perfectly melded that the edges of the giver and the recipient become blurred and difficult to distinguish properly, might well characterize the nursing experience. Ours is a simple, yet sacred, communion quite unlike anything I have ever known. Mrs. Sullivan blessed me that afternoon. She taught me about myself and the nurse I would try very hard to become.