While encouraging him to exercise his ability to breathe air, I tickle his tiny toes. I was pleased at how quickly this little one was going from dusky blue to bright pink. We had worked so hard to get this newborn here safely. My shift had ended and I should have left but I was compelled to see the end of this birth story. His mother has pushed for hours while I wiped her brow and rooted her on while monitoring him during his prolonged birth. I am holding the oxygen tubing close to the wrinkled face of a newborn. My head pounds as I find myself within a reliving a vivid memory from my early nursing career. The words, replaying, clear as a bell: “Drag this nigga behind the woodshed.” How will I get away? His neck, cheeks and arms are tinged pink from the Oklahoma sun. The old woman’s son stands between me and the door. I watch the dying woman writhes with hate on what I had been led to believe was her deathbed. His dying mother hisses, “Son, do we need to drag this nigga out back to the woodshed?” I dropped my hand and said, “Excuse me, sir, but you can’t leave your mother!” I was not there to replace him as the primary caregiver and he had not given me enough time to explain. He was operating under the misunderstanding that the hospice nurse would move in and take care of his loved one as death approached. The red-faced man ignored my outstretched hand and moved past me.
Pain pierced my skin from the salty drops of sweat that dampened my armpits, my groin and my brow. I walked over to him, extended my hand and opened my mouth to introduce myself when he fired, “You are late!” I felt my heartbeat quicken. The patient’s caregiver, her adult son, stood at her bedside. Old women don’t run races like this for long. The skin on her hands and feet were varying shades of splotched sky blue and cobalt. Her lips were cotton candy blue due to lack of circulation, cold and chapped. Her hair, white as snow, lay damp against her scalp. I found the room where my soon-to-be-patient lay dying.
It can be traumatic to see a recently departed family member manhandled, or worse, fall to the floor as he or she is being taken out of the home for the last time.Īs a hospice nurse, my job is to always ensure dignity. I make a note to communicate in my admission documentation that the funeral home would need two people to retrieve the deceased body from the tight halls of this family home. I press my petite body against the large doorway frame and follow the hum of the oxygen machine down the cramped hallway. The text message from the office said to enter the home through the side door. It was supposed to be a routine hospice nurse visit.