Nightshift

Leo Levy
Nightshift

On my first nightshift I was placed under the care of a young male nurse named Justin. Justin was quiet and mellow. He told me he liked night shifts because they give you more of a chance to get to know everything about your patients. As I was very new, Justin kindly gave me simple tasks to perform. Being emphatically not a night person, I struggled to stay awake more and more as the night progressed. Around midnight another nurse, Jessica, came to Justin to ask for help with bathing her patient – the largest on the unit weighing around 450 pounds. Justin turned to me, “Wanna help lift pannus?” he said. I nodded affirmatively. Having absolutely no idea what he was talking about I followed him into the patient’s room. There lay Mr. Ray – a large puddle of flesh in an even larger bed. Mr. Ray’s belly rolled down to his knees and sloshed out wider than his shoulders like a giant water balloon. Mr. Ray’s privacy password, something like ‘meathead,’ seemed to give some insight into his character, as did the fact that his only communication with the world around him was to raise his eyebrows in the affirmative when asked if he wanted pain medication. While Jessica used a wet cloth to wipe down his legs, Justin stationed me on one side of the bed and made his way around to the other side. There he opened up a flat sheet and began tucking one end into the skin folds between Mr. Ray’s thighs and belly. Pulling the middle portion around and under Mr. Ray’s belly fold, Justin handed me the other end and gestured that I should do as he had done. Still not comprehending, I complied. Once my task was completed, Justin grabbed his end of the sheet tightly and braced himself and indicated I should do the same. “Okay,” he said, “Heave ho.” I suddenly remembered the meaning of the word ‘pannus’ as we shifted Mr. Ray’s hanging belly fold, his pannus, up towards his chest. Jessica, a young woman, now leaned in, cursing at the foul odor, to bathe his genitals and perineal area. She did a thorough job. Afterwards we rolled Mr. Ray onto his side to change the dressing on his sacral ulcer. Being stationed on Mr. Ray’s front side I was not able to see the wound. I watched as Justin let out a breath and turned to his head away to avoid becoming nauseous, A new odor, more foul than the first, filled the room. As Jessica cleansed and then packed the wound with roll after roll of moistened gauze, she expressed frustration. “I do not know what we are supposed to do about this,” she said, “There is no way we can keep him off of it.”