I picked the nursing sheets out of the chart, tapped them on the desk to even the corners, and kept them close to my chest while Cheryl blinked twice. Grayer appeared from the hall leading to the labor rooms, officiously announcing, “Miss Hanna! You’ve a new admit in C. And post partum needs Garcia’s chart.” Her eyes flitted between the two of us who remained transfixed at the desk. I sighed, and handed the chart over to Cheryl.
I headed to the small break room adjacent to the lab where we’d first met, hoping the look on my face served as a beacon, a lighthouse warning of Grayer’s advance, yet showing the safe route around the shoals.
Opening the half-fridge, I yanked out a plastic cup of orange juice, meant for diabetic patients in hypo-glycemic crisis, ripped off the aluminum foil seal, and slurped the contents in one gulp. My forearms shivered, a cold electric pulse shot up my spine and down my legs. My hands shook a bit as I tossed the cup towards an open trash can, causing me to miss wide left. Obstetric emergencies no longer fazed me; I could rescue a fading baby in under ten minutes from the time I called an emergency C-Section by this point in my training. Something else, not the shoulder dystocia, had sapped my strength. The shot of orange juice revived my mind, but still I felt cold. I clenched my teeth, and sat down, steeling myself for the next crisis sure to come my way sometime in the next seven hours.
My thoughts drifted while I sat, breathing slowly. I glanced at the bulletin board, and noticed something new amongst the baby pictures and tired cartoon strips: a of map Mexico. A swath of colored pins jammed into the area just below the US border, in Baja California, Sonora, and Chihuahua. I went over to the map, bending and squinting, wondering what they all meant.
“I think the other nurses don’t like that,” I heard behind me. The inner shivers started up again.
“Huh?” I managed, turning round to the door, seeing Cheryl once again, smiling just for me.
“I’ve been asking all my patients where they’re from, then I put a pin there. I get the feeling the staff here, the ones who’ve been around forever, don’t like all these ladies coming over to have their babies.”
I tried to raise one side of my mouth, a half-hearted returning smile. My eyes crinkled, and I shook my head several times. “Why? Who cares?”
“Well, I’m interested in finding out. They’ve all got a story, all these patients. Everybody else sees them as an imposition. The other interns make fun of them, the residents ignore them as people. And the nurses – the nurses act like these women have stolen something.”
“Why’d you do that, stick those pins in?”
“I don’t know, I’m just interested in that kind of stuff.” She paused, waiting. When I said nothing, she went on, “I was an Anthropology major.”
“Where? When?”
“UC Santa Barbara. I graduated four years ago.”
“1971?”
“Uh-huh.” Her smile turned dreamy as she nodded affirmation.
“So you’re what, 25?”
Another nod. “April 11.”
“Really? My birthday’s April 9th! 1949, right?”
She checked at her watch. “I’ve got a break now, 15 minutes. Want to go down to the cafeteria, see if we can find something?”
“It’s closed at 10, you know.”
“Yeah, but sometimes they leave stuff out.”
“Or you can sneak into the coolers, get some pudding or something.” With that, we walked to the elevator foyer, the doors opening and disgorging another patient into our night.