“After Coffee with My Nurse Friend” by Nicelle Davis

Nicelle Davis

AFTER COFFEE WITH MY NURSE FRIEND

—She Says—

The fat. It can’t hold stitches. She kept breaking open. Holes in her stomach pouring liquid. I gathered her in my arms like a load of laundry, stuffed into the MRI. She couldn’t speak. She’d communicate by blinking. Moving her eyes: left (pain) right (pain). Sadness doesn’t need words. I tried keeping eye contact as we pushed her (300 pounds) back onto the gurney, but her tears became mine. I had to look away.

—Google Search—

Soul: A connection with the word sea, and from this evidence alone, it has been speculated that the early peoples believed that the spirits rest in water.

—She Says—

I told her husband she wouldn’t last the surgery. He said he needed a drink and a cheap hooker. I couldn’t tell if he was joking. I knew she had heard. I didn’t know if it was a joke. I said, we all have to cope somehow. She didn’t blink.

—Google Search—

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment: “Laughter is an effect that arises if a tense expectation is transformed into nothing.”

—She Says—

Her husband wasn’t at the surgery. She survived. I held her hand until the nurses’ bell rang. We can make a person live. When we called her home, no one answered. There are times I don’t know what we are saving each other from.

from Rattle #61, Fall 2018

__________

Nicelle Davis: “It is difficult to love; no amount of googling for solutions is going to help this.” (web)

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