Nick at Night

My skeleton lights up like a Lite-Brite at night when I’m trying my hardest to sleep. There are over 400 bones in the human body and I can feel every one of mine. Pain always has friends however, and some of them can be sinister, so when it’s incandescent I trek towards the night nurses at my local hospital.

“Hey, it’s nice to see you again,” Nick says as he collects me from the waiting room. I’m an easy patient with less easy veins. I’ve been attached to an IV pole so many times that I’m losing my luster.

Nick putters around my bed recalling details about my veins and my diagnoses and my bones I struggle to articulate. He slips an IV in on the first try and starts the medications slowly so I don’t get a rushing feeling sending me straight into the floor. We love a nurse who dilutes.

He comes back every half-hour on the dot with medication, “I went ahead and brought this because I knew you’d need it. Usually takes more than one to knock it out.” The slow rush of warmth from the medication hits again, and half an hour later, once more (with feeling).

It’s a long night of the soul, but there’s also Nick at night.