‘MY WIFE IS RETURNING TO THE NHS FRONT LINE, AND I’M SCARED’ NURSES WILL BE THE REAL HEROES OF THE FIGHT, SAYS DONALD BARRY
I’m tearing up as I write this. It’s partly because I’m scared. Scared for elderly relatives, for friends, scared for the future.
But what scares me most is my wife. She’s a fairly senior nurse with a specialised job at a large city hospital. She’s preparing to return to the fight, where deaths are going to be frequent and horrible.
She’s my wife so I’m not going to say she’s not special – of course she is. And I can’t name her or say who I am. In a way, it doesn’t matter who she is; she’s one of tens of thousands of nurses gearing up to treat people. I know mortality rates are relatively low. Still, the prospect of my wife, and all the other NHS staff, becoming infected is high.
What scares me most is how she’s not complaining. She just accepts it and is getting on with her job. She’s cheerful about it in the way that only people who deal in mortality on a daily basis can be.
I know she’s worried, too, but won’t admit it. There’s a Whatsapp group for the women – and most nurses are women. It’s always been pretty active. Friendships forged on night shifts powered by Chinese takeaways, chocolate biscuits, endless tea and the desire to help people as they work in an under-resourced organisation are all but unbreakable.
Messages on it have been increasing in frequency recently. There are jokes about how much they’ve forgotten and need to relearn. More worrying are tales of hand sanitiser running out or being stolen, a lack of masks and general shortages of kit.
Learning just how critical the ventilator shortage is fills me with dread. These machines will be needed to keep alive desperately ill coronavirus patients – who could well be nurses exposed to the disease as they try to save people. There simply aren’t enough to go around. Making hard decisions about who gets one will fall to nurses as doctors are swamped.
And yet still they do their duty, uncomplainingly. Mostly for not much money and rare acknowledgement, potentially even sacrifice, and which seems to come only in times of crisis.
I’m hoping that in a year’s time we can look back and marvel at the miracle the NHS delivered.
Oh, and those tears? They’re not just because I’m scared. Mostly they come from pride.
*Names have been changed