therapy

A few of us nurses got together for a bit of a debrief today. We needed to sit and talk about and process everything that happened with Hubie, and since I was the one who was most involved, the one who helped him slip away, I got to head up the meeting.

It was informal. We sat around in an empty ward and we talked about what happened, all the medicine surrounding his death. And then we all cried about a little baby who we all loved. A little baby who had to go back.

After we'd been there for a while and the tissue box had been handed around more than once, I glanced towards the little window in the door of the ward. It's about four feet of the ground, that window, so I was more than a little surprised when I saw a tiny, brown baby with startled eyes dancing back and forth past the small pane of glass. I did a double take and when I looked back I realized that my friend Sarah was behind the action, holding the little one and waving him there for our amusement. I beckoned her in.

She deposited her charge on the lap of the first nurse she came to, disappeared and quickly returned with another little boy, this one slightly chubbier, but also sporting a little knit hat, just like the first.

Just like the tissues, we passed the babies around. We each took a turn, burying our faces in warm little necks, squeezing chubby thighs and feeling tiny fingers wrap around our own. And then, when we were done, we returned them to their mamas and we all went our separate ways, our hearts a little lighter.

Cheap therapy, that.