VI. Seeing The Unseen

It’s been a year since I left work and it’s amazing to still be here. It’s frustrating to still be fighting for the right to be here. I had no idea how complex my situation was when I left. My first hint of the scale of danger came a couple of months before. The night I ran into the park and sat by the lake, sobbing tears of despair. Prospect Park morphing into my Garden of Gethsemane. Another hint came at the start of the new year when I got sick. I was already worried about how the illness would look to my new manager. There was something about her demeanor that didn’t sit well with me. She was nice enough, but something lurked underneath. I often told myself I was being paranoid, but I kept feeling it. While visiting my doctor to see if I had COVID, I decided to check my work emails and found one from her. She found a pharmaceutical discrepancy from four months before. She wanted answers. “How am I supposed to remember that!” I thought. I instinctively knew she was trying to find something to pin on me. I also knew that in nursing, you can easily find some random mistake and make a case against someone. The workload is so hectic that a mistake will be made at some point. That’s why your reputation is so important. The assumed intent around the error is usually based on the whole person. And that’s why the accusation was very hurtful to me. Because no matter how hard I worked, I wasn’t making any progress with my colleagues. Every mistake I made, even being sick, was a sign of me being a mistake.

After not winning the affection of Leo, meeting and then losing my fiance, and dealing with the chaos of trying to figure out why I was always feeling watched at home, my patients became my refuge. I commented before that they were the only ones who could reflect back to me my good qualities. It was easy to care for them because they allowed me to hold onto a vision I had of myself. While meeting with my manager before I departed, she grabbed a paper she had placed on the side and read a patient’s review. He said I was very loving. She told me that that’s the word most patients use to describe me. Loving. She handed me the paper and I left her office with it. I noticed the name of the patient was familiar. I then checked the email regarding the discrepancy. It was the same person. When I got home I emailed my manager and said, I hope the review of the patient will support me regarding the issue.

I would be lying if I said that I was immediately loving towards all of my patients. That I was always willing to take the time to see them. But there were some who challenged me. One was this older Southern Belle who had been admitted while I was precepting a new nurse. First of all, I love precepting because I enjoy helping new nurses gain confidence on the unit and giving them room to find their rhythm and style. After being bullied for years, I also realized that it gave me the opportunity to change the culture of my unit. To help make it more loving and positive. But on this particular day, I loved precepting because I could tell the new nurse, “That’s going to be your patient.”

What was it about this patient that I didn’t like? Honestly, it had nothing to do with anything she said to me directly. It mostly came from comments made by other nurses regarding her rifle-toting Republican husband and them being from the South. When you added that to her strong need for attention, I just didn’t want to be bothered. Still, I did make sure the new nurse made wise choices regarding her care.

When rounding that night, the patient would often call after my new male nurse. Always calling him, honey. At first, nothing registered in my mind when she spoke to him. But, when he was working with another female patient in the room, our Southern Belle appeared to be a bit jealous and wanted attention. This time, when she said honey, I heard something in it. Her husband was unfaithful. Very unfaithful. She had to use her femininity to make him focus his attention onto her. “I get it!” I thought. I could see her.  I too understood that longing for loving attention. I realized her life wasn’t so different than mine. We both just wanted to be seen and loved.

About a year later, I go into work and the Southern Belle was back. But this time, I wasn’t precepting. She was all mine. I immediately remembered her and my old prejudices. Even so, I couldn’t help but notice how sick she was. I was concerned. Out of my six patients, she was the one I really needed to keep my eye on.

As the hours of the night progressed, I kept going in to check on our Southern Belle. She was exhausted. Her oxygenation wasn’t as high as I would have liked and I worried that she was going to tire out on me. At some point I decided to call an RRT (rapid response team) because I felt she needed to be upgraded.

When the team arrived I thought my worries were over. I thought they would see what I saw and upgrade my patient. About 8 bodies were now surrounding our Sothern Belle with a computer and crash cart. A doctor started calling out the facts about the patient’s condition and everyone began to comment on interventions to protect her life. Blood was drawn and taken to the lab and possible medications were being discussed. “This is all good,” I thought. “We’re getting somewhere.” But then it just kind of fizzled out. The head doctor felt lasix was all the patient needed to reduce fluid overload and she should be fine. She ordered the diuretic, which I administered, and that was that. The team simply left. As I looked at my patient and the mess created by the RRT, I realized we were in trouble.

“I guess it’s just you and me now,” I told my lethargic patient. I knew she was crashing and I was scared.

I tried to calm myself and take in the situation, but there was too much chaos. The RRT left materials thrown all over and I realized that I couldn’t see my patient anymore. If I was going to protect her, I needed to see her. I decided to start by quickly organizing everything and repositioning her body. By this time, a good 30 minutes had gone by. Anne, The RRT nurse rounded back to check on us and was surprised to see me trying to straighten out my patient all by myself. “Robert, what are you doing? You don’t have time for this?” I quickly snapped back, “I can’t see my patient. I need to see my patient.”  Anne stepped in to help and I noticed that the bedding was bone dry. There was no urine. “We gave her lasix 30 minutes ago and there’s no urine,” I told Anne. She knew that wasn’t a good sign and called the team back in.

During the second RRT the decision to upgrade the patient was made and we transported her to MICU. After my shift ended and I was waiting for the elevator to go home, Anne walked by and said,  “You know the results of the blood work came in right after we transported your patient. Based on the results, they intubated immediately.” I was so grateful. Even with our different life experiences, her life was important. She mattered.

In Polaroid Stories, Narcissus’ final scene ends with him looking into a mirror and shattering into pieces. He’s so angry and heartbroken over not being seen and loved. During my final performance as him, I remember looking into that mirror and my body falling back onto the stage as the lights went black. During rehearsals, I kept scraping my knees while creating the death scene and had to get knee pads as protection. So, as I crawled off the stage during my final performance and made my way into my dressing room sobbing, my dresser rushed to me with concern. She thought I was hurt again. But I wasn’t. I was crying because I had to leave Narcissus behind. He gave me my life back. He allowed me to be seen and loved.

The level of belonging and respect that I got from the theater department at Maryland is in stark contrast to the level of aggression and disapproval I often felt on my hospital unit, even though my manager said I received the most compliments from patients. If my patients loved me so much, why didn’t my colleagues?

I should have seen the signs earlier. In 2019, a colleague joked about how often I traveled by saying, “How can you afford to travel so much? It’s like you’re a prostitute or something.” The only other person who has made such comments is the super. “How’s your massage business going?” He once asked with amusement in front of his brother. His brother softly told him to stop. If he was so observant, he would have known I stopped doing bodywork a long time ago. He should also know that those clients donated money to allow my nursing classmates to celebrate their graduation at no cost. Respect.

Or there was the time I had to call out from work due to my doorknob coming off in my hand. It felt unwise to leave my apartment unguarded that night. I got a locksmith and he said whoever did it had to do it from inside of the apartment.

The narcissitic side of me would like to think that I am the only one who has been targeted because I’m just so intriguing and mysterious. But I don’t think that’s true. While taking one of my late night subway rides in the past few years, I decided to get off and explore Avenue U. It was an area I didn’t know well and wanted to check out. The streets there can be very dark, with spots of bright concentrated light from the occasional lamp post.  While walking, I saw a man move out of the darkness into the light. It was my old neighbor. A young Asian guy who had a little dog. He would go off to work every day and come back. Very quiet. Very demure. He had a racing bike and a matching outfit, even though he didn’t have the body for it. I just loved that he didn’t care and rocked it anyway. He wasn’t very friendly, but he was a young man making his way in life. That is until he wasn’t. I didn’t notice right away, but he stopped going to work and was always locked up in his apartment. One day, his elderly father came by looking for him. I had no idea what to say, but thought it odd. Usually Asian families are pretty close. Then, one day I saw an eviction notice on the door and he was gone. When I saw him on Avenue U, he looked lost. Broken somehow. Who knows, perhaps I looked the same.

Then there was the young white lesbian social worker. She had just landed a position at a hospital and was excited to have found her apartment. She said she could never see herself leaving. Then one day, her father came and started to stay with her. The energy I felt from them wasn’t joyful. It was worried. I thought that the dad might have fallen on hard times and needed help. But when my sister came for me, and stayed, I began to question if what was happening to me happened to her.

I have no evidence for any of these thoughts. The feeling of knowing occurred in the same way as when our Southern Belle called out for the attention of my new male nurse. What I do know is, these feelings keep pointing in the same direction.

For example, I was working out in the garden one day. I was surprised to see two kids from the building playing in an apartment that was now vacant. One of the boys, the one who once said that he wished his apartment looked like my apartment, told me that his friend was throwing rocks to harm my plants. “Why did you let him?” I asked. “You have to set the example.” I realized that I was scolding both him and me. What kind of example was I setting these days? I then asked if they were supposed to be in that apartment. Just then, the super moved in the background. When he did, I again had that knowing feeling. I could see the scene being played out but in my apartment.

There was also the time I lost my keys and the super told me to follow him. We grabbed a ladder and entered the garden. He then checked my windows and one opened with ease. While doing this, I turned and the neighbors across the courtyard were watching. The knowing flickered within me. Their eyes told me that they had seen this before. This wasn’t the first time.

The last example I’ll share is one that occurred during a late night walk. I was walking past a vegetable and fruit stand when I ran into a woman and child. I had seen them once before. The first time, I just saw a woman and child. But this time, my eyes started to take in something else. They were more than that. They were characters within a system of others. Each person had a part to play to keep the system alive and the system nourished them in return. And all of this worked within the larger movement of the city. And just as quickly as the shaky image appeared it disappeared. They were just a woman and child again. “How strange.”