The Comfort Nurse

It’s better to have nothing to say than to have a lot of nothing to say. This has been the code I have lived by for the majority my life. After what has happened I need to speak, I need them all to know my side before their condemnation becomes final. To do this I’ll write briefly and will stay on topic because the nuances of my life are not of your concern or the publics. The justice system might deem my actions unlawful but the only jury I’m concerned about winning is that of public opinion. Your article in the Sunday paper will be the only time they will hear my voice on the topic and I’m entrusting you to present them my story with an objective point-of-view, it will be the only thing I will request from you. To understand what happened that night, I will need to start from the beginning. Please don’t judge me until you have read to the end.

He was only 14 when the leukaemia finally got the better of him. That was five years ago. I’m 39 years old now; I was a young mother when I had him. I never wanted him, I cried everyday for the nine months he was inside of me, the crying stopped when the day I gave birth. What was a curse became a blessing the moment I looked into his eyes. He was mine, I thrived on the fact he needed me to cloth, feed and comfort him. It gave me purpose in life and when he died my life reverted back to the meaningless existence it had been before I was a mother. Dying at the age of 14 meant he would never know the joys of adulthood, I watched him every day on that hospital bed fighting the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that life had seen fit to throw at him. He never complained. I think he had lived so long with the illness he was unable to recall what life was like before it all; he came to accept that this was his existence. I also came to accept it in acquiesce.

When the doctors began numbering his days by giving me estimates of how long he would be with us, I asked him were there any wishes he wanted to be fulfilled. He had just the one. It took me by surprise, he was my baby boy and I always associated him with innocence. He wanted to have sex before he died. I didn’t know how to respond to him when he made the request. I suppose it’s natural for a boy of that age to have these desires. Unknown to me at the time, his uncle had snuck him in a Playboy which he hid under the mattress. The images must have created the idea in his head. He died a virgin. I didn’t know how to facilitate his wish, too much time had elapsed and he was gone. I feel I failed him by letting him die not experiencing one of humans’ primal activities.  

I needed to find a purpose for my life again; the house felt desolate after his death. Not a sound or soul roamed the hallways like they once had. In my grief stricken state and in the one of many ways I avoided being in the house, I took up volunteer work in the local hospice. I felt the need to give back to the community that had given me so much in my time of need. I spent time with the patients, reading to them and listening to what they had to say. In a terminal state, you can take solace in the ears of a stranger. Family and friends are too emotionally invested in you to offer silence and breathing space for you to speak openly about your fears and regrets.

John was the first. 50 years old, cancer with only weeks to live. I had started a healthy friendship by visiting him on a daily basis. I would bring him items that he would request. John never asked for anything big or expensive. The most requested item was a Crunchie chocolate bar. He would eat up to five of these a day before throwing up, he would forget that he could not stomach food in his condition. I would sit and watch him eat them. He had a warm friendly smile. Some people posses a certain type of smile, it’s not something you can explain, it has to be experienced. When you saw him smile you were assured he was a good person, a person that didn’t deserve that hand he had been dealt in life. He was alone, I never saw any family or friends visit him and he would never mention anybody in his life in the numerous conversations we had.  I was convinced I was his only friend, in some sort of sadistic way this made me happy. His reliance on me for companionship gave my life purpose and meaning again.

Things were getting worse for John and I knew time was no longer a luxury in his world. I asked him did he want any wishes, if it were in my power, to be fulfilled. He smiled and said no, all he wanted was the flow of Crunchie bars to continue. I held his hand. His head turned up and our eyes met. He had blue eyes, the life were fading in them though. I thought of my son and the first time I looked into his eyes. I got up and locked the door. John was silent; in fact he never said a word during the whole ordeal. I closed the curtains, it was evening time, the remaining light in the sky managed to find its way into the room through the sides of the curtains. It was enough for him to still see me. I slowly removed my clothes one item at a time. John fixed his eyes onto mine. I climbed up onto the bed. His hands were shaking. I held them and placed them on my breasts. He was breathing heavily, he was nervous and I tried to be calm and comfort him. I never thought about it before but I suspect he might have been a virgin. He never talked about his life but I suspect he lived in a fortress of solitude for the best part of it. I always think about him and I always wonder was I the only woman he had been with.

John was the first of five that I would come to comfort in my 18 months in the hospice. It was with him I set myself ground rules. The first rule was that I would never sleep with the same person more than once. The second was not to fall in love, to do this I trained myself to disconnect my mind when engaging with the patients. The third and final rule was not to make eye contact during it. I can’t explain it but I feel there is nothing more intimate than eye contact during sex, it shows you are truly connected to a person on an emotional level, I didn’t want the patients to feel this; it would be misleading. I would engage in kissing but never made eye contact; I stuck closely to this rule until my time with James. The other four patients I will not talk about because unlike John they have families that could be hurt if their story got out. Some of the men had wives. I never judged them for partaking in extramarital affairs on their death beds. It was not my place to judge. I will tell you about James though as the public already knows, or at least they think they know, what happened with him.

James was 14 years old. Leukaemia and weeks left to live, life can be horrifically repetitive. He reminded me of John, a reserved boy, introverted at the best of times. I would read him Roal Dahl books at night when he was unable to get to sleep. His parents were absent most of the time. I don’t judge them, the most difficult thing in life is to sit back and watch your child die. The pain hits people in different ways so it’s only natural that their reaction to it will be different. When it was my son I never left his bedside. I had never done it with a teenager before, all the other patients were middle-aged. I did not see him as a child; when your days become numbered you lose all that is left of your childhood innocence. In my eyes James was a man. I asked him on the day if he thought about girls. He said he did all the time. He had never been kissed. I asked him if he thought I was pretty. He told me I was beautiful, this made me cry. I don’t know why I cried, it had been a long time since anyone had told me that. I prepared the routine of locking the door and closing the curtains. He was shaking like John had when I was with him.

It had never crossed my mind that it could be a possibility the patients could die during my time of comfort. I was looking away as I always did. It was rule three and it could not be broken. The shaking stopped, his breathing stopped and I stopped. I looked up and his vacant eyes were fixed on mine. He was dead and all I could see were my son’s eyes. I couldn’t explain to the nurses about what I was doing in the room during his time of death. In fact I have not spoken about it to anyone.

You reached out to me, I’m not naïve though, I know you have a job to do, it is what a reporter does. You didn’t reach out to me from the goodness of your heart; you did it because you need to fill space with ink. The story will lie on top of coffee tables come Sunday morning and the public will try to decipher whether or not my actions were good or evil. Some will call me a whore; other might praise me for providing peace of mind to the men knocking on deaths door. No matter what way you decide to frame the narrative in the article please keep in mind one thing; my heart was in the right place at all times, and this I know.