Wet drawers

 

There are so many nurses, so many aides, so many cnas and techs, that remembering names is impossible. She had some miles on her, this one--she was what my mother would have called "a hard woman,' but then many of them n the care center were. My people are Calvinists; they don't let themselves go.

The requisite tattoos lit up both arms. Her hair, brushed up in a bush, was multi-colored, an entire branch thereof faux-orange. She's neither young, nor tidy, but, like the others, no matter how she parts her hair, she's good at what she needs to do. She's been my nurse before and  gives me no comfort but the best. 

 I've been in hospitals for the last four weeks now, had literally dozens of nurses, and I can't help but wonder if pre-requisite to the profession is a perfect ear for jokes amid a thousand acres of sheer grace. Still, this darlin' seems vastly more fastidious about my care than her own.

I'd sounded the red button with great reluctance. After all, had I worked at it at all, I might well have gotten away with my soaked bottom. I'd argued with myself about it, tried to conjure a dodge, then finally tossed in the towel. That urinal--what a wonderful invention that is!--isn't without its shortfalls. Fifteen minutes earlier I'd wet my drawers when something or other misfired. There I sat in a lounge chair beside my bed, my legs largely worthless, around a lap full of wee.

I'm quite sure I could have covered up the entire discretion, could have stripped off the soak, found a fresh pair of Jockies, and not had to fess up. I mean, I'm 76 years old, Ph.D. in English, dissertation long ago parked successfully in the library of my alma mater. I told myself I was too dang old to lie--I'm going to call some nurse in here and tell her no matter how young or old: "Sweetheart, I just peed my pants."

When she showed up, I realized I'd been hers before. This nameless,"hard woman" had already proved herself a champ.

"The truth?" I asked. That she knew me made it easier. What the heck?--I told myself, so I just let her know. "I wet my fricken' drawers," I told her. 

She was already working at my shoes. Never looked up. 

"I'm so sorry for what I'm putting you through," I told her.

She stopped on a dime. "Think you're the first?" she said and started ripping at the other shoe. "It's no big deal," she told me, pitching a sock in the corner. "You should know that."

She directed me to the rocker, stood me up like a rag doll, and jerked at that offending piece of clothing. "Shoot, you just got to go on, got to get up and go on."

It was that simple. There I stood, drying out. 

"Doesn't amount to anything, believe me," she said. 

"But it's embarrassing," I told her. "I'm old enough to be your dad and I wet my drawers?" I said. "I feel like an idiot." 

Not one word. Not one glance. You couldn't help but know this wasn't her first rodeo. Then it came. "Oh, don't go feeling sorry for yourself," she said, cleaning me up. "You just got to pick yourself up and go on. "It's what I tell my son all the time, you know?--shoot,  it's what I tell myself--'you got to go on.'"

"How old's your son?" I said, sitting now, back on the Lay-Z-Boy.

"He's 13," she told me, slipping me back into a dry pair. "He's autistic," she said. "He's autistic and he's ADHD and what not else and it's what I tell him, and shoot! it's what I got to tell myself."

It was something I might have avoided, I think, scrambled around the room in my wheelchair, getting a clean pair, pulling it up myself. 

No one might ever have known.