The Staff, Part 3: Perky Nurse

In an effort to write shorter posts, I'll cover the Nurses one at a time. No need to overwhelm you with text, my gentle readers. ("TLDR" is a valid concern.)

What I said earlier in the entry on the Therapists about the staff always sporting a colorful wardrobe was particularly true for the Nurses. Scrubs come in an absurd variety of colors, so a cheerful selection is not hard to come by. All the Nurses tended to wear cheerful or at least pleasing colors. ...And then there was Perky Nurse.

Perky Nurse was an explosion of color and cheer. I don't think there are even names for some of the shades of pink she would wear.

Short, spiky hair. Wild earrings. And pink scrubs.

It wasn't just the wardrobe that made me deem her "Perky Nurse." She simply was... perky. For being a Nurse in a psychiatric ward full of somber faces and snot-nosed tears, she was somehow all smiles, and they weren't even the kind of forced, vapid smiles that Therapist Verdigris had. Perky Nurse's smiles were all-natural, and intense. I could always tell when she was working a shift because I could hear her sunny-toned voice from anywhere on the unit. "Boisterous" is the word, I think. She greeted each patient boisterously, despite the fact that it was 8:00AM and no one should be "boisterous" before nine or ten o'clock.

She was a one-woman platoon against the grim and gloomy atmosphere of the ward. She would fill the void with her gaiety and habromania entirely on her own, and was darn determined to do it.

She cared for her patients like they were her children, full of maternal and absolutely unconditional love. It didn't matter if you were so comatose that you were staring right through her. She still had a smile for you and would make your bed.

That's right. She would make her patients' beds for them.

One day, when she was assigned as my Nurse for the morning shift, I returned to my room to catch her mid-fold as she made my bed. I'd seen her do this for my roommate and was baffled by the behavior. It certainly isn't a nurse's job to make the patients' beds, and the ward was grossly understaffed as it was. So I asked her: why?

"I want you all to feel cared for," she said, fluffing my bed's meager pillow. Then she looked at me with a giant smile and said, "I'm the Bed Fairy!"

I wish I was kidding. Seriously. You can't make this stuff up.

By CSA Images/Snapstock at Getty Images.

So -- thank you, Bed Fairy, for making me feel cared for during my stay. I hope you have many victories in your war against Sadness.

That much pink in a single outfit is completely unnecessary, though.


P.S. I forgot to add -- after that particular bed-making incident, Perky Nurse declared that my lone pillow was the saddest pillow she'd ever seen.

"It looks like it's been run over by a truck!" she declared, and promptly fetched me a second pillow to make up for my initial pillow's failings.

I didn't have to be jealous anymore of my roommate's ownership of a second pillow. I had my own secunda pillow, thanks to the Bed Fairy.