Today’spoem

The exhausted nurse stood by the bed as the patient breathed her last, She held the woman’s hand in hers, then heard the final rasp. She felt a hand upon her back, then a whisper in her ear: ‘Come on my love, go take a break, you’re no longer wanted here.’ Someone took her by the arm as her tears began to fall, She mumbled she was sorry: ‘This isn’t me at all.’ She now was in the bathroom; in the mirror, saw her face, She ripped her tear-stained mask away and said: ‘I hate this bloody place.’ She tried to stop the flow of tears at the loss of a dear friend, A fellow nurse in training, she was with her to the end.

They’d met as young probationers, met their setbacks with a shrug, They’d laughed and cried together, helped each other with a hug. But that was many years ago, a friendship forged in steel, The loss of her dear loyal friend will take some time to heal. The grief-struck nurse sat in her car, the end of a 12-hour shift, Her colleagues understood her pain when she began to drift. As she drove home, she passed a park, saw them all out in the sun. She wanted to wind the window down: ‘Do you know what you have done?’ She bit her tongue and carried on to where her children slept, She didn’t want to wake them for they’d know that she had wept. She’d do the same tomorrow and try to save a life, A man might clasp her hand in his and wish it was his wife. But people will continue, their selfish aims pursue, Some will say, quite stupidly, that this is only flu. A mile away, our nurse will be standing by a bed, Praying that the doctors’ skills will ease the list of dead. Yes, we will clap and bang our cans, cheer our nurse with fulsome praise, But all that lovely nurse will want is normal working days.