By Eva D. Deeb, RN
I met Mrs. Chase a few days after I entered nursing school. She was always pleasant and cooperative, but I thought she was a little obese. She let each of us position her and bathe her, but she made no attempt to swallow the liquids or food that we offered her. She spent most of her time in bed in our demonstration room, and time after time she put up with our bungling attempts to change the bed with her in it, and she never made a sound in protest. I became very fond of Mrs. Chase, our adult female mannequin who helped us learn every new procedure. But Oscar was an entirely different matter.
I remember the day I met him. The upper class, our big sisters, had asked us for the umpteenth time, "Have you met Oscar yet?" When they thought that our curiosity had been roused to the appropriate level and the time just right, they took us to the classroom where Oscar made his home. With great aplomb, they marched to a tall green metal cabinet, opened the door, and slid Oscar out. Day and night, Oscar hung from a hook in his skull, attached to a sliding bar inside the green cabinet.
"May we present Oscar, our dear and departed! Who he is remains a mystery. Some say a handsome, smiling, 19-year-old male. We'll leave that up to you. May you have many happy times together."
We were taken aback, to say the least, I cringed – but soon, I was able to touch him. Oscar and his 206 bones became very familiar to me.
From "Between the Heartbeats: Poetry and Prose by Nurses (ISBN 0-87745-517-1, $14.95) published by the University of Iowa Press, www.uiowapress.org.
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