Kaitlin was a nurse at Paradise Peak and one of my best friends. As a nurse, she was responsible for ensuring everyone’s medications were correct and administering them throughout her shift. She liked to pretend like she wasn’t compassionate, but I knew that deep down, she cared a lot for our patients. Tough love was just as important as empathy, and Kaitlin’s value was seen just as much as mine by Mr. March.
“Cassidy,” I heard Mr. March say as I walked into the kitchen.
“Yes.”
“This is Erik. He’s going to be staying in room eight; he’s a vegan,” Mr. March said as he looked at Erik to confirm. “It’s vegan, right? Not vegetarian.”
“Yeah,” Erik said as he totally ignored me and looked out the window at the snow-capped mountains.
His eyes seemed glazed over, and I suspected he was coming down off of a pretty major drug or alcohol binge. Whatever landed him in our facility had probably only happened a few hours before, or he had used before arriving.
It was very common for people to try and curb their withdrawal by thinking that one last sip or hit would make them feel better. I felt bad for the guy; he was about to have a pretty horrible couple of days as his body got rid of the drugs he had taken and the withdrawals began.
“I’ll try to remember, but you might have to remind me sometimes,” I said as I reached my hand out to shake his.
I smiled and tenderly looked at him to offer my support. I always made sure new patients knew they could count on me to make their stay as comfortable as possible. It was my job, but I also really enjoyed helping people.
“Just remember. Let’s not make excuses for why you can’t do your job,” he said curtly and walked away from the two of us.
I opened my eyes large and looked at Mr. March; he knew that look and just shrugged his shoulders in response.
This new patient seemed to have a pretty big chip on his shoulder. I had to wonder what he was there for. My guess was drugs – he seemed pretty strung out. He looked like a spoiled rich kid whose father probably sent him to our facility to straighten up before he was handed the reins of some multi-billion-dollar company. Those guys were the hardest to take care of because they expected so much and put in so little.
Rich, spoiled kids were used to getting exactly what they wanted without having to be polite or work at all. Even when they became addicted to drugs, they expected that just coming to a rehab facility would cure them. Actually doing the work and learning about their addiction wasn’t really what they wanted. Those kids wanted a quick fix and someone to blame when it didn’t work out.
“I suppose he’s going to by my patient?”
“Cassidy, you’re so good with the tough cases. We are lucky to have you. You know, I just submitted your name for employee of the month.”
Nothing Mr. March could say would make it easier to work with a difficult patient. But normally, I could just put their words aside and see that they were sick and needed some loving attention. I already suspected that was going to be more difficult with this man.
My job was to be nice to the patients. I didn’t do therapy sessions. I didn’t give them their medications. My whole purpose for
being with the patients was to make their life better while they were in our care. Sometimes that meant walking with them. Other times, it might mean getting them a different meal. It didn’t matter to me, as long as what I was doing would help them.
“Mr. March, we don’t even have an employee of the month program. It’s just you typing up a certificate for me,” I said with a wry smile.
It was a little joke that Mr. March had with all the staff when he needed something done that no one wanted to do. We were a small facility and it wasn’t reasonable to even do an employee of the month program; everyone worked hard and everyone got recognized for their work on a pretty consistent basis. But our recognition usually came in letting us leave early, or Mr. March might buy pizza for the staff; it was a nice gesture at least.
“But I would give you employee of the month if we had a program,” he said as he patted me on the back.
“Thanks, I think.” I laughed. “Now, I need to go get Alexander’s recipe for this chicken so I can convince Brad to eat it.”
“See, that’s the kind of thing that just goes so far above what others do. And everyone else does a pretty fantastic job, too.”
“I know, I know, I’m employee of the month.”
I started to walk away, hoping Mr. March was done with me. But there was one thing that I knew he was going to comment on. I cringed as I heard him start to talk to me and hoped he wouldn’t write me up for my blatant refusal to follow this one rule.
“Let’s take it out before anyone else sees it, please, Cassidy.”
“Mr. March, it’s so much work to take in and out. I really don’t understand why I can’t keep it in. Just because the patients need their piercings out doesn’t mean I should have to take mine out.”
“No unusual piercings are allowed; you know the rules. If the patients have to take theirs out, so do you.”
“What unusual piercings do you have?” the new patient, Erik, asked as he rejoined the conversation and suddenly seemed very interested in me.
For the first time, Erik looked me dead in the eyes. I felt my body warm at his attention. Not because I wanted him to like me or anything like that. But his deep, brown eyes penetrated me. They looked so far into my soul that I felt the need to take a step backwards as I reeled and tried to figure out if I should respond to his question.