effortless

I sometimes catch myself bitterly regretting the fact that I grew up in North America; the sad reality of American life is that we have completely forgotten what community looks like.

When I first started work here, I was amazed by the little 'families' that seemed to grow on the wards. As the beds filled up, patients started to band together, joined by the bonds of age or dialect or physical deformity. It was a joy to watch former strangers talking and laughing like old friends, but I figured the party atmosphere would taper off as the patient dynamic changed. I was wrong.

Actually, it's becoming fairly standard procedure for me during a shift to stop what I'm doing, look around me, shake my head and smile. I can't help it. The wards are full of gangs. We've had the B Ward Boys' Club, made up of three long-term guys, all in for complicated wounds. By the end of their stays, it was a common sight to find Henry holding the gauze for Andrew while he had his dressing changed. We had The Eight-Year Olds, a little mob I'm tempted to put in all capitals, if only as a lame attempt to show just how explosive that group really was. They rolled together, encouraging each other during wound care and stealing crayons in less philanthropic moods. Recently, it's been The Girls. Young mothers and a token single woman, they plait one another's hair, pass children back and forth and have real, honest-to-goodness sleepovers, mattresses and beds pushed close together, stifling giggles long into the night.

I've never gone through a shift without watching one of the patients look out for another one in some way. They translate for each other. They comfort each other's crying children. They pray for each other. They share food and stories and lives, and I've never once heard a complaint. Because this is what community means. It means living in a hospital bed in a windowless ward along with fifteen-odd strangers and not batting an eyelash when one of them throws up on your foot. It means sitting in a circle and cutting string to make friendship bracelets all afternoon long, laughing and joking with the white girl who thinks she can speak Liberian English. It means taking a child away from a tired mother and feeding him from your own plate.

I forget sometimes that our patients didn't know each other before they came to the ship. They ease so gracefully into this strange community here that I assume they have spent their whole lives living just houses away in the same villages. I sit and marvel at their effortless hospitality and the candor with which they share their burdens, and I'm humbled. I would do well to learn from their love.