Illness, Perfume & Black Chiffon

My career choice was engraved on my heart when I was six years old.

It all started for me in the middle of the night in a darkened hospital room in Twillingate, Newfoundland, where my father was posted with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. It was the mid-1950s, and I was six years old. I remember it as if it were yesterday: waking up, surrounded by those metal-edged hospital screens, and through the gap in the screens seeing a lighted room in the distance. I could hear soft voices in conversation, and I, a frightened child, cried out.

Where was I? What had happened to me?

Soon the light came on and the room filled with people, all dressed in white. I remember the terror I felt.

Apparently, I had been incommunicado for some time. I don't know for how long. I only know that it caused quite a stir when I woke up in the hospital that night. The last thing I remembered prior to waking up in the hospital, was lying on the couch in our house in Robins Cove, suffering from an earache and feeling very sick. I vaguely recalled my parents being alarmed, saying something about a hospital, doctors, and so on. After that there was nothing.

Bacterial meningitis had followed that earache. After waking up, I had memories of receiving injections, being very weak, my clothes being too big, and having difficulty with walking. I ate meals lying or standing, my hips too sore to sit from all the injections, injections that saved my life.

It is an old wives' tale that meningitis leaves you with something or takes something away. It left me with a burning desire to become a nurse. I suppose part of it was the memories of the nurses who cared for me, cuddled me after each painful procedure, and gradually brought me back to health.

But most of all there is the crystal-clear memory of one special young nurse whose name I never did know. She was pretty, with dark eyes and dark hair, and she had a special touch. She would drop by the ward to visit me in the evenings after she was off duty and read me stories.

But one evening in particular she hurried into my room, wearing the most beautiful black chiffon dress and lovely shiny high heeled shoes. The wonderful fragrance of her perfume shut out the hospital smells. She made her quick visit, said she was late for her party, and rushed off blowing me a kiss as she went.

This young nurse, the epitome of kindness and unconditional love wrapped in a beautiful package, would never know the impact she had on one little six-year-old girl.

And so it went. I grew up, geared myself toward the goal of being a nurse, and finally achieved it. I was in a hurry and, at 21, I had made it. But now, 33 years later, I have to let go of my nursing career – the structured part of it anyway.

It is not for me to decide if I touched lives in a special way, I hope I did. In the operating room, behind a cap and mask, I always tried to make contact. Often people have walked up to me and said, "I know your voice, but I don't know why!"

I hope they knew I cared.

And, now, at the end of my life's work, which I have loved, I can still close my eyes and see the wisp of black chiffon and smell the most wonderful perfume of a young woman from so many years ago.

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