Camp Nurse

by Tilda Shalof

  “Hailey.” I rubbed her shoulder. “Please sit up. I want to talk to you.”

  She turned her back to me. I let her be for now. But the next day, right after lunch, I cornered her outside the dining hall and wouldn’t let her get away.

  “Hailey, can we talk?”

  “About what?”

  I wasn’t sure myself, but she walked with me along the path away from the dining hall, then she dropped back, keeping a few steps behind me. I kept on going, hoping that by staying in motion, she’d open up to me. It never seems to fail.

  “Is this a good time to talk?” I prodded gently.

  “What about never? Is never soon enough for you?” She turned away from me. “I told you. I have nothing to say.”

  “It may help to talk. You seem really unhappy.”

  “Well, d’oh! You’re just like my mother. She says I have a ‘bad attitude,’” she said with air quotes. “‘Change your ’tude, dude,’” she said in mock imitation. Her black-rimmed eyes were angry. “It’ll probably improve her attitude to have me away all summer.” She narrowed her eyes. “Hey, maybe you can help me. Tell me, what do I have to do to get sent home?”

  “Are you homesick?”

  “No, but I hate camp. My mother thinks she’s doing me this huge favour by sending me here, but it’s just to get me out of the picture so she can screw her asshole boyfriend all summer. They’re always making out. It’s sooo gross. I even saw them drunk one night.”

  “What would you do for the rest of the summer if you went home?”

  “The only place I feel good is in my bedroom alone, with the door closed.”

  “If that’s the case, it must be very hard for you at camp.”

  “I hate every minute here.” Her voice was full of bitterness and her body was tense with rage. Even her clothes were angry. She wore a plaid grey-and-black mini-skirt that was held together with a large safety pin, and a black T-shirt with a skull and crossbones on it. She had a purple streak in her hair that hadn’t been there yesterday. “There’s no point trying to convince me. I won’t stay. Nothing you say will change that.”

  “So, you’ve made up your mind not to enjoy camp.”

  “That’s right and I’m warning you, I’m relentless. I will not give up until they let me go home. I am so not staying at camp. Staying here is not an option.” She glared at me. “I’ll hurt myself if I have to.”

  I switched tactics. “What music are you into?”

  She looked surprised at the change of topic but I knew how that question could open doors.

  “Metallica. Alice in Chains. Indie bands like Burn Planetarium and The Harold Wartooth. But I can’t listen to any of that music here.”

  “No, probably not.”

  “The music they play here is so yesterday. These people are all cheerleaders or jocks. Well, let’s just say, Avril Lavigne is the extent of their angst.”

  How well I knew what it felt like to be on the outside. I had also been a morose, sullen kid at Hailey’s age. Like her, I didn’t fit in, felt angry at the world, and expressed my barely contained rage by putting myself in dangerous situations, being rude, and acting out toward authority figures. I too had been just as desperate to run away from my problems and reject everything and everyone. Perhaps Hailey sensed my empathy for her because she began to open up. Without any prompting, she told me about her biker boyfriend who was in his twenties and came from a really messed-up home and how she believed she could help him get off drugs. “Sending me to camp is my parents’ twisted way of keeping me away from him,” she said, “but it’s not going to work. I’ll run away if I have to.”

  “Will you promise me something, Hailey?”

  “No way!” She folded her arms across her chest. The door slammed shut again.

  “Please, I just want you to promise to keep talking to me, okay? Please.”

  That was it. We’d reached Hailey’s cabin and parted ways for now.

  I added Hailey to my list of kids I worried about. That list remained short compared to the number of happy campers. However, the ratio of happy to unhappy was reversed with the parents: more were displeased than satisfied. Or perhaps it just seemed that way because the dissatisfied parents were the ones I heard from the most. There were days when I spent more time on the phone with parents than I spent with their children at camp. In some cases, the child was perfectly content, but the parents were not. I remember one teenage girl who happily bounced in to phone her parents who had insisted on having her call them, and when she emerged from the private office after talking to them, her eyes were red and puffy from crying. “They said how much they missed me and now I’m worried about them,” she said, wiping her face with her sleeves. “I wasn’t homesick before, but I am now.” It took her awhile to collect herself enough to run off and be with her cabin again.

  Sometimes we called parents. It was camp policy to call parents when a child was started on a medication or stayed overnight in the mc, even if the child was already feeling better. I was always able to reach a parent quickly, even if he or she was a busy surgeon or a lawyer. No matter what operation she was in the midst of, or what cross-examination he was involved in, I was put straight through. A call from camp took top priority! Of course, there were some parents who weren’t satisfied with the nurse’s report; they were reassured only after speaking to the doctor. After so many years working in the ICU, informing and counselling families about the highly technical and complex medical conditions of their loved ones, it was frustrating to hand over the phone to the doctor for him to repeat what I had just told mom and dad about their child’s headache or sore throat, but that was what they expected.

  Some parents called with very specific questions about their child’s moods, behaviours, and interactions with others. Based on my observations of their son or daughter, they tweaked the child’s medication regimens accordingly.

  There were times when what seemed like a straightforward call would become more complicated. For example, once I called a mother about her child’s ear infection.

  “What about his leg?” she asked.

  “I’m calling you about his ear. Tyler has an ear infection.”

  “But he had a sore on his leg when he left for camp. Has it healed? And now, he has an ear infection? How did that happen? Do you think it could be MRSA?* Did you check for that?”

  “It’s not something we normally check for, here at camp.”

  “I saw a TV special about an athlete who had MRSA in a wound and he died within twenty-four hours,” she said. “I need to speak to the doctor.”

  Parents were hungry for any information, medical or otherwise, that I could provide about their kids. They were grateful for even the smallest detail, such as having seen their child eat a slice of pizza at lunch. I was sympathetic to their feeling of being cut off, because even right there at camp I felt frustrated, knowing so little about my own kids! But then I might be asked to do favours like arrange for a change in their child’s bed position in the cabin or a switch to another cabin altogether. “Meaghan won’t speak up for herself, so we have to do it for her,” one parent explained. I was reluctant to follow through with these demands, because if there was one thing I had learned by then, it was that there were benefits in allowing kids to solve some of these problems by themselves.

  Then there was Wayne, who I saw bravely, dutifully, going through all the motions required of him, and still looking miserable. His counsellor pulled me aside. “That kid reeks,” he told me. “He stinks, and it’s way worse in the cabin.” I went to the cabin and followed my nose to Wayne’s bed. Stuffed under his mattress were rolled-up soiled pairs of underwear.

  “It’s disgusting!” the counsellor said. “He’s doing it to get sent home.”

  Now I understood the pinched noses and the nasty jokes I’d heard from time to time around camp:

  “Hey, Wayne, have you read the bestseller The Brown Spot on the Wall? It’s written by the Chinese author Hu Flung Poo!”<
br />
  “Pee yuuuu … Hey Wayne! Haven’t you heard of soap and water?” someone said.

  A few kids were in the cabin and I heard them snickering as I talked to the counsellor. One kid muttered something about running the dirty underwear up the flagpole. That did it! I became incensed.

  “This bullying will stop immediately!” I shouted at them. “There will be no more teasing. That goes for everyone.” I glared at the counsellor and the kids and made everyone feel ashamed and guilty – I hoped! I ran to another cabin where girls had stuffed their T-shirts to mimic a girl who had large breasts, and I came down hard on them, too. Next on my crusade was a cabin known for short-sheeting the bunks, and for dipping the fingers of sleeping campers in warm water to make them pee in the bed. So far, it hadn’t worked, but I let them have it, too, just for trying. All around camp, I heard their astonished reaction to my rampage.

  “The nurse is going ape!”

  “She’s losing it!”

  “She’s so random!”

  At the time I didn’t care what they said, but, in retrospect, it probably wasn’t the best way to address the problem. At least I’d had my say. I’ve heard some people call bullying harmless teasing; they say it’s one of the rites of passage, just kids being kids. However, I suspect that it’s only those who did these things themselves as kids who believe that, it’s never the ones who were on the receiving end. Yeah, camp is a great place, I wanted to tell Coach Carson, unless you don’t fit in. Then, camp can be torture. I’ve always felt an affinity for the extremely uncool.

  Wayne’s mother didn’t seem surprised when I told her about his hygiene problem. “I feel sorry for him,” she said. “We thought it would be good for him to go to camp, that it would help him with his shyness. He has no friends.”

  “He’s in my son’s cabin. He and Max are friends.”

  “Well, that’s nice. We promised him a new computer if he stays at camp the whole summer. I’ve already bought it and had it set up in his room.”

  The next day, I took Wayne for a walk and told him I had spoken to his mother.

  “Did she say I could come home?”

  “No,” I said gently.

  “I figured they’d want me to stay,” he said, despondently, as if he could see their point of view and even commiserated with them. “I just have to deal,” he said to himself more than to me. He told me how he hated swimming, of course, and the bathroom stalls, because they were dirty and there was no privacy. He couldn’t do that with other people around. I said he could use the mc bathroom whenever he wanted and could come to me at any time, even during the night. Then, impulsively – despite his mother’s note that Wayne needed a “warning” before being touched – I reached over and gave him a hug. Then – what a gift – he hugged me back!

  Every day after lunch, I spent the afternoon calling parents. I usually made my calls in the mc where it was quiet. The mc was officially closed, but one afternoon I forgot to lock it and a group of girls gathered in the waiting room, chatting and checking themselves out in the full-length mirror. Shamelessly, I eavesdropped. “… we’ll tell the nurse they’re spider bites so she’ll give us Benadryl and then we can sleep in the cabins all afternoon,” one said.

  “I have such a crush on Eric. He’s sooo hot!”

  “Don’t you just want to fall into his eyes?”

  (Swooning sounds and muffled sounds of surrender.)

  “My counsellor and her boyfriend were doing the dirty in my cabin. I came back to get my towel for swimming. I thought she was on her day off …”

  “I’m so thirsty but I can’t stand camp water. We only drink Fiji water at home.”

  “My nanny is so clueless – she put water bottles in the freezer and then expected us to drink them. Doesn’t she know they get all toxic and yucky when they’re frozen?”

  “I hate camp water, too. They never give us ice cubes!”

  “Omigod! I hate this mirror. Look at my thighs! They’re huge. I’m such a cow!”

  “Get out! What are you talking about? You look great.”

  “I figured I’d lose weight at camp, but I’ve been sneaking in here, weighing myself every day, and I haven’t lost a pound. I’m going on a starvation diet!”

  (I wanted to smash that damn mirror. It was almost as if they were obligated to express dissatisfaction with whatever they saw in it.)

  “Have you seen Samantha’s legs? They’re soooo thin!”

  “Yeah, and she’s got those leg diamonds happening, you know, that space in between her legs at the top where you can see to the other side ’cause she’s so skinny.”

  “What about her baggy clothes? They are sooo disgusting.”

  “You know, she should change her name to Anna.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “You know, Anna Rexic! I think I heard her throwing up once after lunch.”

  “I heard she was in the hospital for it. I wish I could be anorexic, too.”

  “She freaks me out, but it’s better than being fat. I couldn’t be friends with someone who was fat, could you?”

  “Which nurse is on duty?”

  “I hope it’s the young one.”

  “The old one is kind of grouchy. What’s her name, anyway?”

  “I dunno. They call her ‘Nursezilla.’ I just say ‘hey, nurse’ if I need something.”

  I opened the door. There were only three fourteen-year-old girls – all slim and pretty – but it had sounded like ten of them.

  I put on my sweetest smile, stuck my hands in my pockets. “Yo, girlfriends! How’re ya doin’? Just chillin’?”

  The party screeched to a halt. Their horrified expressions, fired at me faster than a high-speed instant text message, made me immediately shift back to behaviour more befitting my age and status. “How may I help you young ladies today?”

  “We need to talk to you. Privately.”

  “All three of you? Together?”

  “Yes. We have the same problem.”

  “That’s quite a coincidence,” I said dryly. I took up a seat facing them.

  “We have constipation,” they said, practically in unison, giggling madly.

  After the hilarity settled down, I asked a few questions about their condition. It turned out that what they were really doing was trolling for laxatives.

  “Why not try eating more fibre?” I suggested.

  “I hate fibre,” said one girl.

  “What is fibre, anyway?” asked another.

  The third girl slumped into the couch, examining her split ends. “Why can’t we just have the pills?”

  “You don’t need them and they can disrupt your system.” By then they had tuned me out, so I sent them packing, each with a plastic bag of dried prunes for medicinal purposes. I wanted to tell these popular, cool girls to go easy on the others who weren’t like them, but I held back from lecturing. I locked up the Medical Centre. Caitlin would be taking over and I had the rest of the day to myself. Just as I was leaving, I caught sight of myself in that mirror and stood there for a moment. I looked so parental. I saw what they saw: a mother, a ranting, raving mother.

  I went to my room, put on my swimsuit, and walked down to the lake and dove in. I swam far out as if to get a distance from my disquieting feelings. Usually when I swam, campers would stand on the shore and call me back for something, but that afternoon, no one disturbed me. I knew I probably shouldn’t go this far alone, but I was a strong swimmer. It’s the one brave (okay, reckless) thing I do.

  I swam until I reached a small island in the middle of the lake and climbed up onto the rocky shoals to sit there for a while. Looking back, Camp Carson was so very tiny. All around me was the lake and the sky. The beautiful view buoyed my spirits. I lay back on the rock and closed my eyes.

  Within minutes, a motorboat roared up. It was the camp’s crash boat zooming at me like the Coast Guard in hot pursuit of a high seas pirate. The boat made a wide arc and pulled up in front of me. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you n
ot to swim alone?” the swim counsellor scolded me from the boat.

  I nodded guiltily.

  “You should never swim without a buddy,” he continued.

  “You’re right.” I got into the boat. By the time we returned to camp, I had a plan.

  I got dressed and drove to the nearby town. First, I treated myself to a nice dinner and a glass of wine at the local diner. Then I went on a shopping spree at the Giant Tiger – “Your All Canadian Family Discount Store” – and spent over one hundred dollars on skinny jeans (for my not-so-skinny body), a halter top, a fleece hoodie with “City Grrrl” on it, sparkly eye makeup, and a bottle of Britney Spears’s perfume, Curious. (Like her, I’d probably be asking myself one day, What was I thinking?)

  Back at camp, my new look made an instant impression. Counsellors and campers alike flashed me appreciative nods. Caitlin, anxiously waiting for me, also noticed. “Hey, girl, you look freakin’ fabulous!” she said, hastily applying a layer of cherry lip gloss. “I have to talk to you, like, asap!” She hustled me in and launched straight into her news.

  “Samantha fainted! Eric had to carry her in. She had new cuts on her arms and legs and when I went back to her cabin to get her stuff, I saw blood all over her sheets.”

  “Did you tell Kitch? What about Wendy and Coach Carson?”

  “I promised Samantha I wouldn’t tell anyone.”

  “You shouldn’t have done that. You have a duty to tell them.”

  “She’ll have to go home, won’t she?”

  “I don’t see how she can stay here. She’s not well.”

  I went to talk with Kitch and Coach Carson about the situation.

  Again, Kitch dismissed my concern that Samantha was not well enough to be at camp. “We’ve been down this road with Samantha and her mother before.”

  “She feels secure at camp,” agreed Coach Carson. “We’ll keep an eye on her.”