The No Nonsense Nurse

 When my mom was admitted for triple bypass heart surgery, I never imagined that she would experience a sex scandal during her stay.

She was in the Cardiac ICU immediately following her surgery. It was a single room. Our family enjoyed coming to visit her in that setting. After a week, she was moved to a shared room. I called to see how she was getting along with her new roommate. “Is she nice?” I asked.

“No.”

“No?”

“She won’t say a word to me and her husband’s acting rude,” Mom said. I could hear their television blasting in the background. “I’ll tell you more later.”

Later that night, around 2:30 a.m., Mom awoke to the nurse shouting, “What do you think you’re doing? You can’t do that.” Mom was confused. The room was dark. She realized that the couple in the room were in bed together, and they weren’t sleeping. The distance between the beds was less than four feet. Only a curtain separated them.

“You have to leave the room right now,” the nurse continued. “I don’t care where you go––the waiting room, the lounge––but you’re not staying here.” The man mumbled that they had asked for a private room, as if that justified his actions.

The nurse shamed him. “How would you feel if this was your wife lying here and a couple were carrying on in the next bed?” He admitted he wouldn’t like it. Reluctantly, he left.

An hour later, Mom awoke to the nurse’s voice again, telling the roommate that they had found a private room. Several staff entered with flashlights and gathered her belongings onto a cart. It took three trips. At last, they wheeled the roommate out of the room.

The next day, the nurse asked Mom, “Do you remember me? I was only here for four hours.”

“I remember,” Mom said with a chuckle.

The nurse smiled with a gleam in her eye, as if to let her know that she was the one who took care of business.

by Jeff Funk

Jeff Funk is a freelance writer who lives in Auburn, Indiana. Visit his website at http://www.JeffFunk.com