It smells like beauty here.
I rolled the window down an inch and let the wind mess up my hair. I just spent a half hour with a flat iron fighting the frizz but I don’t care much. The dirt and mushroom odor slid in over the glass while a deer fly found its way out just before the wind velocity made his escape impossible.
Next stop, the parking deck.
North on Forest Highway 13, cut over to Kentucky Trail then Buckhorn Road, 94, 41. Four stop signs in the forest and four traffic lights in Marquette, and I approached my home away from home, the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, the NICU (said NICK you). An hour commute when the weather is good. More, usually.
Into my scrubs, worn see-through in spots, a three minute scrub – fingertips to elbows, report from the charge nurse, negotiating assignments, another more specific report. Then, finally, work.
Taking care of my wee little friends.
And their peeps. That can be the hard part.
Who am I kidding? That is always the hard part.
We NICU nurses are gentle but we are also bigger than the babies. If they don’t want to do something (and trust me, they often don’t), we can make it happen anyway. Not like with adults. There are no noncompliant preemies. Feisty, maybe, but not noncompliant.
Newborns can fight you but they can’t win.
This is what I do. The rewards are huge but so are the risks. Welcome to my world.
August 9, 2012
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