THE NIGHT NURSE

Night Nurse

You think you couldn't do it. But it's so easy. It's so easy to look at a little girl and see your own eyes instead of someone else's. It's so easy to look and see your husband's good traits there in your beautiful child. It's easy to make a family. It's harder to keep one together.

How could I be so callous? How could I do what I have done? How could they let that happen? How could that possibly happen?

I'll tell you how it happens; it's fast. It happens in that moment when you don't care all that much about the way things are supposed to be, but you care very much about the way things might be. It is the moment when love becomes need.

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The last time I practiced it took me four minutes and fifteen seconds to get in and out undetected. That's too long.

It's almost midnight and I'm standing at the far end of parking lot near the back door of the clinic, smoothing my scrubs against my thighs. My hair is pinned back away from my face and covered with a curly brown wig. My scrubs are standard issue. My necklace is thin and unobtrusive. I wear no perfume.

Every time I sit, even when I crouch to pee, my right knee bounces up and down, uncontrollable, so I stay upright as much as possible, even as the hours pass by. I know I should be tired; I shouldn't even be able to stand up anymore. Six nights have gone by on watch like this. The days I've used to plan, sleep elusive. But I don't feel tired. I feel like I just finished running a race - my cheeks are flushed, my breath is quick, joy fills me entirely. My brain has started working in a way that is new to me, fast but clear. I might be focused on one thing, and one thing only, but it is that focus that keeps me on task, keeps me from the weakness inherent in all people, keeps me strong and upright. I feel all-powerful. In many ways, I feel like I could fly. I stand at the ready, a buzz vibrating through my body, fatigue not even a consideration.

My car is parked at the front of the lot, facing the exit. There is no guard on tonight, Sunday, and I have spent enough time in this parking lot on Sunday nights lately to know that if you wedge a tiny rock in between the mechanical arm that blocks exiting traffic it will open when your car approaches. The lot and the hospital are both ideal. The clinic door is in the back out of sight – almost invisible in the moonless dark. The parking lot faces the side street off Main and is usually about a quarter full. The doors to my car are unlocked; the key is under the mat. I can take no chances with fumbling.

I keep a sharp eye on the entrance to the ER. Not knowing when it will happen is something I'm not entirely comfortable with, but in the weeks I have been preparing for this I have become ready for anything. Because I'm not willing to make a mistake, I wait for the perfect situation.

I have to pee, I have had to pee a lot, which might be from drinking large fountain sodas crouched in the back seat of my car so I can continue to go unseen. That and French fries from the Burger King drive thru nearby have been my daily sustenance.

I slip into the trees beside the lot and look around to be sure I'm alone, the croaking frogs my only company. I crouch and pee, counting, as I always do, how long it takes. I count a lot of things these days. I'm not sure how it started. How many glasses are on the table, how many red cars are in the parking lot, how many steps it takes to get down the hospital corridor, how many minutes it might take to get back out.

When I finish and quiet my knee, I kick up the dirt around the puddle, like an animal in the wild.

I watch as ambulances scream into the driveway and pull up to the entrance, bloody men and sick women and sometimes a wailing child spill out into wheelchairs and gurneys. Light floods the entrance illuminating their faces, giving me one and two second glimpses of their pain.