Can't Wait to Get to Heaven

Nurse Boots

7:19 PM

Before she went off duty that night, Ruby Robinson’s nurse friend, Boots Carroll, stopped by Elner’s room to check on her. “Is there anything you need before I go?” she asked.

Elner said, “Not a thing, honey, everybody is taking real good care of me.”

“Well, you try and get a good night’s sleep, and I’ll stop by in the morning.”

Boots was the oldest working nurse at Caraway, and the only reason she was still on duty was because of the terrible shortage of nurses. It was not like it used to be when she and Ruby had entered the profession. They had both been influenced by the movie Women in White, and when they were young girls, nursing was thought of as almost a noble profession, a true calling to serve humanity, one step below a nun, as her Catholic friends had said at the time…but things had changed. A lot of the new crop of nurses were just in it for the money. They now had the unions and were always going on strike, or threatening to. Never mind about the poor patients. All the nurses who had walked out on strike hated her because she had crossed the picket line, but with Boots her patients were her first priority. Nursing was no longer just a career for young girls. The profession was now full of men, and she resented it. In her day it had been the male attitudes that had kept most women from becoming doctors, and now they were horning in on her profession. Some were serious and did a good job, but there were also a lot of sissy boys who had taken up nursing. She couldn’t care less about their so-called sexual orientations, but there was one in particular who had lied about her to the head of the hospital; told him she had made mistakes when she hadn’t. He had caused her to be demoted. She also did not like the way he talked. He thought it was funny to refer to all his female patients as “that bitch in room 304” or “that fat bitch” or that “skinny bitch.” He clearly did not like females, and it irritated her. A good nurse does not notice gender. She had never referred to any of her patients as bastards or bitches, and throughout the years she’d had her share of both. Plus, he was always standing around in the hall, talking about his sex life, spreading rumors about movie stars he had never met, and to hear him tell it, he had been propositioned by every man he ever said hello to. But the real reason she had no use for him was that he was a mean-spirited vicious little gossip who should not be in nursing. Boots had lost part of her right leg to cancer in 1987 and wore a false leg, and so when she overheard him calling her “The Goody One-Shoe old bitch” behind her back, it was not so funny to her. He had no idea how much she hurt each night from walking those halls all day, or how long and painful it had been to learn to walk again. He may not know it, but she had feelings. “I may be a nurse,” she thought, “but I’m a woman too!”