Two Nurses

What a hospital stay taught me about kindness.

When you’re most vulnerable, you learn about kind people.
This Substack Essay is a story about two nurses. One, I will forgive; one, I will never forget.

6400 Unit. Lockdown. August 2009

I’m not really sure how I got there. I remember being terrified and completely alone.

What I remember most about those days and nights is two nurses.

It was the middle of one of the roughest stretches on my life’s highway to healing, and I had ended up in the hospital after a time when I had not been very kind to myself. A brief trigger warning: if you’ve struggled with self-inflicted misery, this story may not be an easy one to read.

After the first lost 24 hours, I had trouble sleeping — in fact, I couldn’t sleep at all.

The night nurse — dark-haired, glasses-wearing, narrow-featured, with soft empathetic eyes — would do everything she could to help me. She brought ice chips and water, sometimes a cheese sandwich or an apple with peanut butter and graham crackers, and she would sit with me when I was completely dysregulated.

She called the doctor over and again to ask about adjusting my sleeping meds.

She was patient, calm, and compassionate.

She was kind.

She charted my inability to sleep and made careful notes so the rest of the staff would understand how difficult the nights had been for me.

Then there was the morning nurse.

Not the same thing.

Puffed hair. Stale perfume. Something else nauseating I couldn’t quite place. Too much jewelry. Bracelets clinking. Clothes and makeup that spoke of mirrors at eye level in an apartment I imagined had few visitors.

Every morning at 7 a.m., as her shift began — hell or high water — she would burst into my room, flip on the overhead beams like fluorescent interrogation lamps, and wake me for my “mandatory morning meds.”

I would beg her to turn off the lights.

I would ask her to read the chart and see that I had only fallen asleep a few hours earlier — that the night nurse had written how difficult sleep had been for me.

She would stare at me as if she didn’t care, or perhaps could not register any feeling for my anguish.

She was not kind.

Every day during my five-day stay, I saw the difference between them — their contrast, their approach to kindness and unkindness — and every day I promised myself I would never forget how each of them made me feel.

We never forget how someone makes us feel when we are vulnerable.

Looking back now, all these years later, I realize something important about kindness.

Kindness, I believe, is a choice.

I don’t think it has much to do with personality or upbringing. Sure, some of us have been through serious things. But in the end, we all have antennas. We can receive signals from the people around us — some of us better than others — but we still choose how we respond.

Compassion or judgment.
Patience or irritation.
Understanding or indifference.

Kindness requires awareness. We actually have to be paying attention.

So many people walk through life feeling invisible and unnoticed — the tired barista, the coworker with the office door closed, the stranger at my gig the other night quietly nodding along to the music but not quite looking up.

When we notice people, we create the opportunity for kindness.

And despite what the world sometimes celebrates, kindness is not weakness.

Anybody else tired of the womp-womp wankers celebrating toughness and winning because they’re insecure?

Call me crazy, but in my world it takes real strength to listen instead of arguing, to forgive instead of retaliating, and to help someone without needing credit.

That takes restraint. Humility. Emotional courage.

Kindness might be free, but it still costs something.

Real kindness requires patience, time, and sacrifice.

Sometimes it’s giving someone your attention. Sometimes it’s offering grace to someone who may not quite deserve it. And sometimes it’s simply choosing understanding over being right.

There’s another place kindness matters — and that’s toward ourselves.

Says that voice to myself:

“How are you doing, man? Sleeping okay? Passing up the Big Arch and the large fries? Been to a meeting lately? Walking any?”

Kindness includes how we treat ourselves and how we speak to ourselves.

Ask yourself something: Would you say that kind of harsh stuff to your best friend? Would you talk to someone you love that way?

Give yourself room to grow. Make mistakes. Learn the lessons.

And tell that messed-up voice in your head that says you are less than——

To go %^&$ itself.

Kindness creates ripples.

Toss a pebble into the pond and watch the circles spread outward. Acts of kindness rarely stop with the person giving or receiving them — they keep moving. One small moment of patience or encouragement can change someone’s entire day, maybe even their life.

You never know when a simple act of kindness might put someone back on a path that changes their trajectory.

So why not try?

Kindness is actually pretty simple. So —-

Let’s make a deal. Grab a piece of paper or an index card — 4×6 is my favorite — and write one word on it with a Sharpie.

Kindness.

Now here’s the mission: every day when you look at that card, remember that in every situation involving someone you care about — or even someone you don’t — the job is simple.

Make it a little better.

Be kind.

Perhaps kindness is simply this: choosing to leave people a little better than we found them.

The world feels loud and angry some days, and maybe the quiet courage we need most right now is the courage to calm each other with kindness.

Kindness might be the antidote.

And maybe — just maybe — the answer.

Till next time,

Stay Standing and Steady On.
mls

P.S.
Oh yes — one more thing.

To the nurse with the glasses and the soft, kind eyes:

I don’t remember much of those first few nights, but I do remember you.

Kindness stays with the heart long after the years fade away.

Your compassion taught me much about dignity, grace, and humanity.

Thank you.

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