On Nurse Baboon’s Watch

She was a frightening woman. She was a hulk of a woman. She was a woman who did her job and nothing more. She always had a scowl, never a smile. There was never even a hint that she ever had smiled. Her ape-like features along with her generous hind quarters were enough to earn her the name Nurse Baboon.

I had been in the hospital for seven weeks the first time I saw Nurse Baboon. I was in a coma from a serious motorcycle wreck. I was wearing my helmet, which was a rarity in those days. You better believe I wore one after that!

I admit I probably had a drink or two that I shouldn’t have. In those days I thought I was invincible. Who needed a helmet? I was a good driver.Wrecks were for novices and people who drove carelessly. I had been riding for about six years and had never had an accident, not even a scrape when I was learning to ride.

During the first part of the time I was in a coma, friends and family sat by my bedside. By the time I woke up, most had grown weary or lost faith that I would ever come out of it. Seven weeks is a long time, I suppose. It’s enough time for an alcoholic mother to lose faith She never really had any anyway, I suppose.

Anyway, none of my friends or family had faith that day, so I had to come out of the darkness that had been my life for seven weeks to the sight of Nurse Baboon. I don’t mean she was in the room. She was straightening my pillow when my eyes opened.

Her face was right there, close enough for me to feel her breath on my cheek. She was close enough to nearly scare me back into my coma.

After an initial yelp from me, she straightened up and gave me a disapproving scowl and welcomed me back with her harsh words.

“It’s about time you stop laying around!”

She went to the foot of the bed and pulled my chart from the hook that held it. She scribbled something on the chart. I imagined it was the time I awoke. She slopped some water into my pitcher, and a portion of it onto the table on which it sat. I supposed it was the first time it had been filled in a couple of weeks. That’s when the number of visitors had dwindled.

I was less than impressed by the outpouring of jubilation at my awakening. It wasn’t that my mom didn’t show up. I figured she was out on a bender somewhere. I thought my kid sister might show up, not with a bouquet of balloons but at least with that lopsided grin of hers. I didn’t even get one of those crappy cards that Lois buys when someone is sick at the shop, one that she passes around for all our co-workers to sign. I must’ve signed a million of those things!

I watched Nurse Baboon wander in and out of the room all day, it seemed. She was not very good at her job, but she was deliberate. I knew she had earned the name Nurse Baboon when I watched her make the bed. She wrestled with the mattress and the bedding for what seemed an eternity before she managed to get it all straight.

I watched her, and only her all day. I studied her to the point of paranoia, trying to figure out what she had done to keep everyone away.

Finally I tired of watching her struggle through her day. I asked if she had even bothered to let anyone know that I was awake.

Nurse Baboon said in her matter-of-fact voice, “See, you died in this very bed two days ago. Spirits aren’t usually so slow to come back.”

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