Because I was more familiar with this town, Cambria had agreed to leave the apartment hunting to me. At least, that was part of the reason. The other part was that she’d been gallivanting around with her friends all Summer, too preoccupied to help me look for a place. Even in a small college town like Freya, affordable housing went fast, so I’d applied for this apartment as soon as I found it online. It really wasn’t that bad. Cambria just had high standards.
Earlier that day, Cambria had enlisted some guy friends of hers to help us move our heavier belongings into the apartment: our beds, a couch, some of the larger boxes. At least she’d contributed in that manner. She and I had just finished getting the smaller items up the stairs, and then her complaints had ensued. While she went on eyeing our new place in disapproval, I got out my boxcutter and began slicing into cardboard to get us unpacked.
“You’re a college student now,” I told her. “It’s time to start living off top ramen and buying clothes from thrift stores.”
“Yeah, right. I’ll be working part-time. I’ll have enough cash to enjoy my life. Unlike you, apparently.”
Cambria didn’t really seem to appreciate the fact that I’d worked throughout my first three years of college. I had ended up staying on at the bookstore in Rockwood. Hattie always worked with my school schedule, and she even gave me a few raises while I was there. I’d worked during all three Summers, too, trying to save up whenever I had the chance. And it paid off. All of that work, combined with living at home, had resulted in me saving enough money to leave Worn Pages and simply focus on school for my senior year. That was something I looked forward to, because nursing school, as it turned out, was enough work on its own.
A year earlier, when I found out I’d been accepted into nursing school, I had presented to my parents the letter of acceptance. My mom hugged me, and my dad had said, Nurse Drew and Doctor Cambria. I wanted to point out to him that Cambria hadn’t even graduated high school yet, but I decided to just let it be.
“Will you start opening the boxes over there?” I tossed the boxcutter to Cambria and focused on pulling out some old dishes our mom had given us.
Cambria obliged and somewhat randomly declared, “I’m so excited for tomorrow.”
“For school to start?”
“Mhm.”
“You’re not nervous?”
“No, not really.”
I didn’t believe her.
“There are lots of cute boys in college, right?” she asked. “Like, a lot of them.”
“I guess.”
“Why haven’t you had a boyfriend yet?”
Even though she was four years younger than me, Cambria had already had two boyfriends at that point. And it was true—I’d had zero.
“I’ve been on some dates,” I defended myself. “I just haven’t met anyone who’s really . . . interesting.”
“I don’t really care if they’re interesting. Just cute.”
“That’s nice,” I said. I located a decorative pillow in a box and chucked it at her. It hit her in the back, and she stopped what she was doing, flung her hands up in the air.
“Drew, please don’t throw my throw pillows.”
I started laughing, and she followed suit. After we got most of our belongings unpacked and the boxes broken down, I ran to the nearest market to stock up on some food. That night, in our wallpaper-lined kitchen, I made the two of us dinner.
“Are you serious?” Cambria’s disappointment was evident in tone and facial expression when I brought out two bowls of top ramen to the living room.
I plopped down next to her on the couch and extended a bowl to her. She was practically glowering at me.
“Just try it,” I prompted her. “Just for tonight, to officialize your new phase of life.”
Reluctantly, she took the bowl, and we ate, surrounded by cardboard, bubble wrap, and almost every item we owned.
“Cute boys aside, college is fun, isn’t it?”
“It’s better than high school. You’re really not nervous for tomorrow?”
“No,” she said. I still didn’t believe her.
“How’s your dinner?”
She gave me a sideways glance as she slurped up some noodles.
“Actually,” she said after swallowing, “it’s not too bad.”
“That’s the attitude I’m looking for,” I said. “Not too bad.”
◈ ◈ ◈
Nursing school was not what I’d expected it to be.
Really, I’m not sure what I had expected it to be. Even though my mom was a nurse, I’d never asked her about her experiences in school, which I realized at this point was both crazy and rude of me. I suppose I just figured nursing school would involve some hard work and a few challenges, but I would simply get through them, intact and relatively unscathed.
As it turned out, I did get scathed. Literally.
We began our clinical rounds the second day of Fall Term. My previous year of school, I had quickly learned to dread the clinical rounds. Just the word clinical was enough to make my body clench up in apprehension. I enjoyed the didactic side of the nursing program fairly well—studying, taking exams, completing projects. That kind of thing was in my comfort zone, and I was good at it. But, actually going to the local hospital, interacting with real patients, and doing the tangible work . . . That was a different story for me. That was not in my comfort zone, and I wasn’t so sure how good I was at it.
I told myself that I would just get used to it eventually. I had to get used to it. The clinical rounds were accurate representations of the work I would soon be doing as a nurse, after all. When I attended my first clinical session of the current school year, though, that pesky feeling of dread plagued me once again.
For the first week of the term, my cohort was to simply follow nurses around various departments of the local hospital and observe the work they did. It sounded, to me, like this first week should be tolerable enough. For this first day, we were shadowing nurses in the emergency department.
The first patient we observed in the ER was a woman who had come in reporting stomach pain. It was immediately obvious, though, that something more than just stomach pain was going on.
The woman, in her late thirties but appearing much older, was thrashing around in the hospital bed. She had been given a respiratory mask for some reason, and she would alternate between breathing shallowly into the mask and pulling it away while shouting. There were three other students with me, and we all stood as far away from the woman as possible, right up against the curtain that separated this room from the next.
“It’s rotting my mouth,” the woman barked. “This gas is rotting my mouth.” Then she would clasp the respiratory mask back to her mouth and breathe into it like a terrified rabbit.
“A psych patient.” The nurse we were following told us this under her breath before approaching the hysterical woman. “But I think some of her physical symptoms are real.”
When the nurse was standing at the side of the hospital bed, she spoke to the distressed woman in a loud, high-pitched voice. “I’m going to need to give you an IV now. I think you’re dehydrated, so this will help you. But I need you to calm down, okay?”