"[A woman] is usually a success as a sick-nurse, for that profession requires ingenuity, quick comprehension, courage in the face of novel and disconcerting situations, and above all, a capacity for penetrating and dominating character."
- HL Mencken, In Defense of Women
"She never sleeps, the TikTok nurse. She is dancing, dancing. She says she will never die."
- Twitter
The Red Cross of Comfort, John Morton-Sale, c. 1919
There is a long beep emitting from my patient's alarm. It is the sound that accompanies the end of a life in the ICU - the patient's heart has ceased to beat, and a long flat green line appears on the monitor beside his bed. "ASYSTOLE, ASYSTOLE" the monitor screams. This is usually cue for everyone to run into the room, ready to pound on the patient's chest and pump him full of drugs necessary to restart his heart. In certain cases, however, the patient has been deemed what's called a Do Not Resuscitate (DNR), which means we allow the patient to die naturally (as naturally as one can die lying in a sterile hospital bed hooked up to monitors and punctured with endless tubes).
Such is the case with my patient tonight. He is 85 years old, dying of pneumonia related to the coronavirus. His family has prudently decided not to inflict torture on his elderly, frail body, and has made him a DNR. It is 11:23, and he has just died.
Despite having nearly 10 years under my belt as an ICU nurse, this is my first night in this particular ICU as a travel nurse. I am unfamiliar with the location of certain supplies, and the postmortem paperwork. But caring for a dead body is the same as in any ICU - remove the IV catheters and tubes, wash the body, place him on fresh sheets, and transport him down to the morgue. I begin to wash his body. It is still warm. I place some gauze inside his mouth, and gently wrap a ribbon around his head and tie it under his chin, so as to keep his mouth from gaping open.
In the background, I hear music. It is loud pop music blasting from the nursing station. I can see through my patient door's window. A nurse has her hands on the desk and is thrusting her buttocks back and forth. Another is spinning in a chair next to her. Two more are standing by doubled over in laughter.
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