The First Night

As she drove up to the hospital, she was a little nervous. This was a new job for her, and she didn’t really know what to expect. And it was the night shift. In a hospice unit. She figured the patients would be asleep. What she wasn’t banking on was the emotions she would be feeling by the time the shift was over.

She finds a parking spot, gets out of her car and walks up to the hospice unit.

Once on the 4th floor she’s greeted by the other 2 nurses that she’ll be working with, and well as 2 CNAs. They seemed very nice, and she instantly felt relaxed. She places her lunch bag in the refrigerator in the kitchen, and her purse in a locked drawer at the nurses’ station.

She’s just in time to hear the report from the day charge nurse. There are 10 patients in the unit. 5 of them have family that will be spending the night. Out of the other 5, 3 of them sleep most of the time, 1 of them just wants to be left alone, and the 5th one is having a difficult time because no family has been there to visit in over a week.

In general, most people find working in hospice to be very morbid and depressing. It’s true that you must have a certain mindset to work in hospice. You have to truly care about others and want to help the patient, and the family, get through tough times. This was very true for Marie. She loved to help people. And if she could help make someone’s last days on earth more peaceful, she wanted to be a part of that.

She never thought she’d meet someone like Derrick though. As soon as she walked into his hospital room, she knew she had to focus on him for the night. She saw how special he was right away.

He was very young. In his 20s. And Marie knew instantly that Derrick was special.

As she walked into his hospital room, a meek smile appeared on his face.

“Hi,” me murmured.

“Hello, Derrick. My name is Marie. And I will be your nurse tonight. Is there anything you need right now?”

Derrick shrugged his shoulders and looked at the gaming console at the foot of his bed.

“No thanks, I’m ok for now. I’m just going to play my games.”

Marie looked at the console. “Oh, are you a big gamer?”

“I like to play from time to time,” he said. “And I’ve been playing more and more since I’ve been here. Helps pass the time while I’m bored.” A sad look crosses his face.

Marie knew she’d be in his room for most of the night.

She asks him what’s wrong.

He holds back tears as he explains:

I’ve been here for over a week, and no one has come to visit me. The friends who said they’d always be there for me; none of them have visited. None of them have even called me. No text from them. Nothing.

Marie felt bad for him.

“I’m so sorry that your friends haven’t visited you. It sounds like they’re not good friends at all.”

He looks at her, and tears start falling down his face while he tries to maintain his composure.

“That’s nothing. My own family hasn’t even come to see me. I’ve never felt so alone in my life. That’s why I’m playing the games. It puts me in a different realm where I forget about everything else for a while.”

It gets Marie thinking. It’s so sad that this young man’s family hasn’t even visited him. Family is so important. And here this 20something year old is, sitting in a hospital bed, playing video games to pass the time, because he doesn’t want to think of his family and friends not visiting him,

It saddens Marie.

She starts thinking about her own life. Her own family. Her own friends.

And she wonders how much she’s been there for them lately. For a visit. For a phone call. For even a quick text message so that they know she’s thinking of them.

It really made her put things into perspective.

She says to Derrick, “I have to finish making my rounds to the other rooms. But as soon I as I’m finished, I’ll come back here and check in on you.”

“I’d like that. Thank you.”

And Marie kept her word. She checked in on her other patients, made sure they all had what they needed, gave them their routine medications. And then she went back to Derrick’s room.

He’s playing some sort of survival video game that she wasn’t familiar with.

“Is that game difficult to learn?” Marie asks

He connects a second controller and hands it to her.

“Not really. The goal is to be the last person standing. So, whether you do that by killing everyone not on your team, or if you hide from everyone, it doesn’t make a difference. Just was long as you survive.”

Other than periodic checks on her other patients to give them their meds and make sure they’re ok, and doing some quick charting, Marie spent her shift keeping Derrick company and playing games with him. She saw smiles on Derrick’s face, and he seemed happy.

This reinforced to Marie why she became a nurse. It’s not just about administering medications. It’s so much more than that. It’s about truly being there for the patients in their darkest time.

It also made her realize that she needed to re-evaluate her own life and how often she’s there for her own family.

Towards the end of her shift, she went to check on the rest of her patients. Derrick said he wanted to take a nap. He thanked her for spending so much time with him and that he hadn’t felt so happy since arriving at the hospital. She told him she’d be back before she went home.

And she did just that. She went back to his room about a half hour before her shift ended.

When she arrived at his room, his eyes were closed. She just stood at the doorway watching him, because she didn’t want to wake him up. She was going to leave him a note, but as she looked more carefully at him, she noticed something didn’t seem quite right.

She noticed Derrick wasn’t breathing. She just stared at him for a few seconds to make sure. Nope. No chest rise. She felt his wrist. No pulse. She grabbed her stethoscope and placed it on his chest by his heart. 30 seconds. No heartbeat. 60 seconds. No heartbeat. She listened for a full 2 minutes just to be sure. No heartbeat.

He had died.

She started to cry.

She didn’t think his time was up yet. His spirits had seemed to get better as the night went on.

But she also knew that he wasn’t in hospice to recover.

She was grateful that she got to meet him. She was able to make his last living hours on earth a little bit brighter.

That’s what she was meant to do.

Even though no one came to visit him in the week that he was there, Marie was there for him. She knew that he appreciated that.

It made dying a little bit easier for Derrick.

It made Marie realize to never take anyone or anything for granted.