Eyedrops

She has no hair and the biggest blue eyes you’ll ever see.  Their intensity is magnified by the yellow mask that I always see her wearing when she’s in the ED.  She’s been to see us far too often.

The visits seems to be getting more frequent.

There are a string of baseball-stitch type scars across her little head.

She just turned seven years old and has been recovering from the excision of an anaplastic astrocytoma.  On a scale of one to bad, that kind of tumor is nearly the worst kind.

Everyone looks tired.  She looks tired.  Her parents look tired.  The family that joins them, usually about twenty minutes after they arrive in triage, looks tired.

The angels are near.  They may take her soon.

The attendings spoke the words ‘palliative care’ the last time I saw her.  Immediately I told charge I needed to step out of the unit for a bit.

There is a bathroom near the unit that is a great place to cry.

Is it wrong to want to see a child pass away?

I bring eyedrops to work. None of the other parents need to see that you’ve been crying.

—

Social Services tried in vain to find a place that would accept her.  Four hours later, there were no institutions in the city and surrounding suburbs that would accept.  The family had given up years ago.  They were disengaged in the care of their child.  She wasn’t even their child anymore.  She was a ward of the state.

How do you give up your child?  It must be an awful feeling.

Behavioral problems are often the most tragic things I see.

The devils of the mind are indeed wicked.

—

Aside from the occasional meal outside my apartment and work, I’m eating, drinking, breathing, and excreting Nursing School.

Once a dream, now a reality.

Where are those eyedrops…