by Tilda Shalof
In the emergency department the doctors and nurses transfused him with three units of blood. They prepared to take him into surgery to get the bleeding under control, but were also making arrangements for him to be transferred to Toronto for highly specialized surgery to re-attach his fingers by a top expert. I could hear the whirring of a helicopter on the hospital landing-pad, waiting to fly him there.
“I’ll call your parents,” I told Tom, who was now more alert after the transfusions and the fluid resuscitation but still groggy from painkillers.
“Don’t got no parents,” he mumbled. “Mom’s dead and Dad’s in jail.”
“Who should we contact to let them know what happened?”
“I’ve an uncle but he don’t like to be disturbed.”
“What’s his number?” I pulled out a piece of paper and a pen.
“He don’t have no phone or nothin’ like that.”
“Well, give me his address and I’ll go and tell him.”
Instead of an address Tom gave me directions that involved a country road, a turnoff that was a “fair stretch” past a motel, a left at a tall red pine tree, and a right at a row of cedars. I got all that down just before he dozed off. I called the camp to tell them that I was going to track down Tom’s relatives, but no one was picking up because they were probably still busy with Colour Wars. I left a message on the answering machine and went to my car.
I drove along the single-lane highway and was soon on that rut-filled dirt road that Tom had described. It seemed to lead nowhere. After a few minutes, I was so far off the beaten path, there was no one around to ask directions, no gas stations or pay phones. My cellphone wasn’t picking up signals, and I was getting nervous. Eventually, after turning past a row of some trees, I stopped at a shack with a sagging porch. A grizzled man in bib overalls over his bare chest emerged. He stared at my car with suspicion. I got out and walked toward him. A woman came out on the porch and stared at me. Two naked toddlers were playing in the dirt. The man grunted, yes, when I asked if he was Tom’s uncle. I told him about the accident but he showed no reaction. I left, shocked at what I had seen. How could I have been unaware of such a terrible situation that existed so close to home? No one should have to live like this, I thought, as I drove back to camp. A nurse should know about this!
As far back as Florence Nightingale, nurses have known how poverty causes illness and higher mortality rates. They understand the health effects of inadequate housing, sanitation, nutrition, and hygiene, and championed their reform. Tom’s family was way off the grid and far beyond the protection of our social safety net. They had no running water or electricity and no access to healthy food, proper housing, health care, or education. How did they cope with our severe winters? What did they do when someone got sick or injured, like Tom? I had never come up close and personal with a case of such extreme deprivation. What a huge divide existed between the two sides of the camp’s kitchen counter.
“Where were you?” Wendy pounced on me when I returned. I was so relieved I’d found my way back to camp that I’d completely forgotten they’d be wondering about me. Coach Carson joined her and said how worried they’d been, but they both sounded way more irritated that I hadn’t been there to help on the busiest day of the summer. I explained what had happened, assuming they’d understand.
“You spent all day with a kitchen staffer and left one nurse all by herself to care for eight hundred campers?” Wendy said.
“How irresponsible! You jeopardized the safety of everyone at camp. Where were your priorities? What were you thinking?”
“That a boy needed me. I couldn’t leave him. He’s only fifteen.”
“He’s a hired worker. He’s not one of ours. Your responsibility is to the campers under your care, to the parents who have paid us to keep them safe, and to us, your employers. Pills were missed at lunch and at dinner – Caitlin couldn’t handle it all by herself. The mc is packed with kids who need your attention. You better get in there right away.”
Kitch didn’t say a word and Caitlin was quiet. She seemed miffed, though we chatted briefly about Colour Wars, but then she stopped, applied a layer of lip gloss, and turned away from me. Gone was her usually friendly demeanour and she wasn’t calling me “girlfriend” any more. But she was a nurse, too; why didn’t she understand the choice I’d made? I guess all she could see was that she had been left alone with a lot of extra work and that I had let her down. I later found out that not only had the mc been busy all day and the work non-stop, but in the middle of it all, Samantha had fainted once again. Kitch told me that when she returned to consciousness, she wouldn’t talk to anyone or let anyone touch her, not even to take her vital signs. Kitch had called her mother and told her that Samantha’s medical condition was now unstable. The camp could no longer take responsibility for her and he had no choice but to send her home.
Just as we were about to close up for the day, someone ran in to announce that the Blue team won. I didn’t join the victorious celebrations, nor the evening entertainment at the amusement park that had been set up on the soccer field, complete with roller coaster and go-karts. I went to bed.
The next day Samantha’s mother arrived at eleven o’clock in the morning, looking as well-groomed and glamorous as ever. Kitch told her that Samantha needed medical intervention and psychiatric treatment and that she could die from anorexia nervosa, which is what he finally concluded she had. The mother seemed far more concerned about getting back to the city in time for a business meeting. She looked at her daughter and said to me, “Sam’s been given everything. I simply don’t understand how this could have happened.”
Just before she left, Samantha looked at me and said in her soft, wispy voice, “My mom never worries about me. She always thinks everything is okay.”
“Well, we’re worried about you,” I said, “and we know everything isn’t okay.”
I hoped now she would finally get the help she urgently needed.
That day Hailey was quiet, too, but it was unlike her. The night after her parents left on Visitor’s Day she had stayed in her cabin and wouldn’t come out. She went on a hunger strike in protest of her “incarceration” at camp, but gave up by mid morning the next day.
I offered no sympathy but did feel admiration for this feisty girl and her rebellious spirit. Secretly, I was rooting for her, but there was no way I would condone her self-destructive behaviour. That very evening at dinner, she came up with a clever solution to her problem. We were sitting in the dining hall when someone shouted out “Hailey jumped!” There was a collective gasp and then a hush.
The trippers, whose table was closest to the balcony, leapt to their feet and ran over. Others quickly followed. People gathered at the railing, looking down the sloping hill that led into the lake below. At the bottom of the six-foot drop lay Hailey, among fallen branches and twigs, and banana peels and apple cores that the kids had thrown off the balcony. I ran down the stairs but as I approached, my pace slowed. Her eyes were tightly closed and she was breathing normally. My ICU intuition informed me that she was okay. She hadn’t done any harm to herself.
“Hailey?” I knelt beside her on the ground. “Open your eyes.”
She kept them pressed shut. I could tell she was fully conscious. The old phrase the lights are on and someone is home came to mind.* Kitch soon arrived at the scene but also saw right away that Hailey was okay. Since he knew I had a connection with her, he backed right off. She had a few scratches and he would examine her later, but for now she was okay.
“Hailey,” I said firmly. “Please get up.”
This is your ticket home, I thought. I helped her to her feet, brushed her off, and watched her limp away, leaning on to her counsellor’s shoulder. I went to tell Coach Carson what had happened and pushed for her to be sent home.
“You’re going to put me out of business,” he pretended to complain, but he recognized the seriousness of a suicide attempt, regardless of how half-hearted this one was. H
e knew she had to go. I kept her overnight in the mc but she was angry and wouldn’t talk to me. In the morning her mother called.
“Is Hailey all right?” Eileen asked tentatively.
Then Douglas came on the line. “I understand you have our daughter in your custody. How could this have happened? Why wasn’t she supervised?”
“I hate them,” Hailey said to me when I got off the phone, “and, I won.”
“Hailey, would you like me to arrange for you to get help? I know you’ve refused therapy in the past, but would you go now?” I asked her.
“Can you say that the camp forced me? I don’t want my parents to think I’m agreeing to anything.”
I said goodbye and then did something I’ve rarely done in my long career. I wrote down my telephone number on a slip of paper and handed it to her. I told her she could keep in touch and call me at home if she ever wanted to talk to me. I usually keep my private life separate from my patients, but my experience with Hailey helped me realize that sometimes stepping across the divide is the right thing to do. What had helped me when I was Hailey’s age had been the few adults who befriended me. I wanted to be that safe adult, that sympathetic listener for other young people, and I knew I had been, however briefly, for Hailey.
But she crumpled up the paper, threw it at me, and stomped off to her parents’ car.
A few evenings before that first session of camp was over, the kids put on the long-anticipated production of Wicked, directed by Eric, with outstanding performances by talented children and staff. I went backstage to congratulate the cast members and Eric and his ever-present assistant Wallace but they were being swarmed by fans and I couldn’t get close. The next morning, on my last Pill Patrol run, I caught up with Eric.
“I want to congratulate you on a wicked good performance,” I said, having fun with teenage lingo.
“Can I tell you something on the down-low?” He looked at me. “I know I can.” He drew a deep breath. “This is my last summer at camp. I haven’t told my parents yet, but I’m not coming back.”
In a flash I knew why. For some time I had sensed that Eric was gay. Why else had I instinctively held back from asking him who he was crushing on or had hooked up with as we drove around camp, gossiping? Why had I never teased him about joining in on the trippers’ late-night parties? As for Einstein, I had a feeling that he was more to Eric than merely his stagehand. But Eric was so deeply in the closet, especially to his parents. He could never come out here at this camp. This was not an accepting or emotionally safe place for a gay person. One of the things camp teaches young people is what it is to be male or female. It can be a place to experience awakening feelings of sexuality, of which, to be sure, there are many variations. But at a camp like this there were only a few acceptable choices, and being gay was not one of them.
Eric thanked me and said goodbye. Though he didn’t confide in me, I believe he knew I understood and would keep his secret safe.
On my last day at Camp Carson, early that morning, Caitlin and I went on our last hike. Again, I invited her to visit me in the ICU. “Sounds awesome,” she said, but I didn’t think I’d hear from her. She and Kitch never did warm up to me again after that incident with Tom.
There were certainly things I would miss about Camp Carson. I had many pleasant days there. I took one last look at myself in the MC’ s waiting room mirror. No, I hadn’t lost any weight – the food had been too delicious – but I was fitter and trimmer. I now owned a pile of clothes that I’d never wear again, but they held good memories. I vowed to keep up my new commitment to exercise back in the city. As for all those funky hip hop moves and grinds that I’d learned? I probably should have saved them for the privacy of home, under the dark of night, but I went ahead and did a short demonstration of “Souljah Boy” for my kids.
Harry covered his eyes. “If anyone asks, say you don’t know her,” he deadpanned to Max.
“Who are you and what have you done with our mother?” Max wailed.
But I had gotten what I’d wanted out of camp. I had observed first-hand the pleasures to be had if you were a part of the fun and secrets, and also the perilous position you were in if you weren’t. I had a lot of sympathy for the relatively few kids I’d met who simply weren’t able to join in. Sometimes they were excluded from the group, but some excluded themselves. The group wasn’t always at fault; there were kids who weren’t able or didn’t want to let themselves in. They needed more privacy, or more rest from the constant activity and demands of having fun. Fun could be exhausting. At camp, so much depended on your ability to cut loose, lose yourself, be silly. I loved the campers’ utter lack of self-consciousness as they sang the “Funky Chicken” or “Little Bunny Foo Foo” or their full-on engagement in zany antics, like the counsellor who made announcements using a banana or a broom as a microphone; a table of girls all with orange-peel smiles; Eric and Wallace sauntering around with hollowed-out watermelons on their heads like green helmets. I delighted in watching their delight.
What I really understood was the connection of kids to their counsellors. As parents, we like to believe we have the greatest influence on our kids, but I saw the power of peers and, even more so, that of the counsellors whom the kids look up to. They are the ones the kids are watching. They are the ones they idolize and try to emulate.
I knew I’d never return to this camp. Camp Carson was far too big, profit-driven, and materialistic for me. That exclusive “members-only” feel I’d picked up on the first day stayed with me the entire time. Differences were, at best, tolerated, never embraced nor encouraged. All the same, I felt proud of the work I had done there. I helped a lot of kids go through the experience of a minor illness or injury and learn that they could be cared for or comforted by someone other than their own parents. I felt grateful to Kitch for all he taught me about the “care and feeding” of healthy children. I’d met many fine, talented children and young adults who would likely go far in life. They’d been given every opportunity to succeed, every advantage that money can buy. Among them there were also some terribly unhappy, depressed, and anxiety-ridden teenagers who weren’t getting the attention or treatment they needed. In some ways their lives were stressful, and in other ways they were coddled and sheltered. They faced very few hardships and even fewer opportunities to take risks or solve their own problems. Most kids overcame the difficulties they encountered at camp by themselves or with the help of their bunk mates or counsellors. However, in too many cases, children were deprived of the opportunity to solve their own problems by adults stepping in to fix things for them.
I was thoroughly exhausted and ready to go home. I needed to recover from so much fun. Was there even a place for a grownup like me at a camp like this? I was surprised when the Carsons invited me back. Despite Wendy’s annoyance with me for leaving camp during Colour Wars and the minor disagreements I’d had with Coach Carson over the summer, there must have been enough about my work that they liked for them to offer me the position of coordinator of the Medical Centre.
“You’ll run the show,” Wendy said. “It’s time we began turning things over. Eric will soon be taking over the business, as you know.”
I didn’t betray Eric’s secret and although I declined, Coach Carson didn’t think I could resist. “You’ll be back,” he predicted. “You’re a camper now. It’s in your blood.”
My own kids had a blast at Camp Carson but couldn’t say they preferred it over Na-Gee-La. They simply loved camp. The day before we left, Harry ran off to the forest to release the snake and the frogs he’d caught (kept in separate jars, naturally) back into their natural habitat. Max was pleased with the new word he’d learned: “Lacoste.” He begged me to buy him one of those polo shirts with the tiny green alligator, but sadly for him, he had parents who balked at spending eighty dollars on a child’s shirt.
The last night farewell campfire was a stirring ceremony. A chunk of charred wood – legend was it had been salvaged from last year’s campfire
, and from all Carson final campfires before that – was passed carefully around the circle. A display of intertwined canoe paddles spelling out CARSON was set ablaze on the dock at the waterfront. It was a sweet moment.
After a few of the usual rollicking songs, including a final round of the “Cha-Cha Slide,” the songs grew quieter and the kids became pensive as they stared into the flickering flames, their arms wrapped around each other, swaying back and forth. The last song was “Taps.” The wistful mood it conjured felt strange in this usually jovial place. The children sat cross-legged around the fire. I could see my own two smiling boys sitting side by side with their friends, their arms entwined, leaning into one another as they swayed and sang the simple words.
Day is done, gone the sun,
From the hills, from the lake,
From the skies.
All is well, safely rest,
God is nigh.
Still sitting outside the circle, but singing softly along with them, I was momentarily jarred at the unexpected mention of “God.” Who said anything about God? It seemed out of place here at this camp, which, for me, had been completely devoid of any sense of spirituality.
As the bonfire died down, my summer at Camp Carson came to an end and along with it, I decided then and there, my career as a camp nurse. It was time to get back to my work in the ICU with real patients. My camp days were done, gone the sun.
* In the ICU, privately, quietly, among ourselves, we occasionally utter variations of this coarse shorthand about patients we’re worried about. Admittedly, the phrase sounds callous – though I’ve never heard it used that way – but it can actually be somewhat useful. When we say that the lights are on but no one is home, it captures something about a certain ambiguous, often-fluctuating disturbance in a patient’s level of consciousness. It conveys the notion that the patient has a partial or limited awareness that is coupled with a significant underlying neurological impairment, which may be temporary or permanent. Lastly, the lights are off and no one is home denotes a rare and extreme situation. If the patient has suffered extensive brain damage and rescue attempts are deemed futile, then this version may even be a description, albeit a very superficial and cursory one, of the irreversible state known as “brain death.”
