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Show 295 air, letting the winter sunshine warm my face. I am alone. Tears are falling slowly down my cheek. A young nurse in green scrubs I have never before met has come through the door and into the courtyard. She is kneeling next to my wheelchair, meeting me at eye level. "She's a good nurse," she is saying and I do not quite know how I should respond to that. "There was no one on today who's ever had you before." "She knows nothing about stiff-man syndrome," I am trying to respond, nicely, wiping my cheeks with the back of my hand. I am telling her about my good-morning shaking, the applesauce and the slow Versed and she is listening. "It's sometimes difficult for the older ICU nurses to be flexible," she is saying, smiling, picturing the applesauce, I am sure. I am beginning to see the humor in it as well. "They sometimes have their routines and their schedules and conscious patients like you don't always fit into that," she adds. From out ofthe comer of my eye, I notice that my white nurse is no longer in front ofthe nurses' station. "If you'd like, I'll be your nurse for the rest ofthe day," she is continuing, and I am relieved. "We'll just trade patients," she is elaborating, as if this sort of thing happened every day. |