Nurse Reflects On 'Compassion Fatigue

 

Afflicted

Kristin Laurel

 It is the night shift, and most of Minneapolis does not know

that tonight a drunk man rolled onto the broken ice

and fell through the Mississippi.

He lies sheltered and warm in the morgue, unidentified.

Behind a dumpster by the Metrodomea

 mother blows smoke up to the stars

;she flicks sparks with a lighter

and inside her pipe, a rock of crack glows

before it crumbles into ash

1and is taken by the wind.

Another mother waits up for her son;

he was shot in the chest, then pushed out of a fleeing car.

He bleeds on black pavement, exhaust fumes hover over him.

Through the back doors of the ER

medics dump off the indigentand 

black-booted cops track in salt and sand.

We are all misplaced.

An Indian braveis just plain drunk

;the white paint on his cheeks and noseis

 from huffing paint.

He is snoring off his stupor

from drinking bottles of Listerine

(the poor man's liquor).

It's so easy to judge

but we are all broken, in one way or another

;The officer was just trying to clean up the streets

keep his back seat sanitary

when he picked up another filthy drunk

and shoved him into the trunk of his squad car.

The young nurse was conned

into being callous

;It only took being spit at, being called a bitch

and one punch to the face, to learn to be gruff

and keep them all cuffed to the bed

:She takes off soiled jeans

,uncovers scraps of a shredded newspaper

the homeless man's underpants (pissed-on words)

.A grimy, tattered shirt is stuck to his chest

,she peels it off, holding her breath, while

flakes of dead skin detach into the air.

In one more hour it will be daybreak.

She will go home to her clean house,

her white down comforter on a pillow-topped bed.

But, she knows,

there is an affliction in the air.

Even the snowflakes fall like ash

She washes her hands.