Sometime in the night, I felt my arm being lifted and the blood pressure band wrapping around it. I opened my eyes and focused on my nurse. It was my neighbor. She was a psychiatric nurse who went on duty at midnight. She lived in the house behind ours and sometimes we talked over the fence. I knew that she was divorced and struggling, so at Christmas time my children and I bought toys for her children and gave them to her on Christmas Eve. Three weeks later I ended up in the mental institution where she worked.
She told me she read my name on the chart, and she wanted me to know she was there through the night if I needed anything, or if I just wanted to talk. After she took the blood pressure reading, she removed the band from my arm. She then leaned over and scooped me up in her arms, holding and hugging me. She told me how sorry she was that I was ill. Then she told me she loved me and my beautiful family.
I felt so drowsy from the medication, my eyelids were heavy, and in a quiet, weak voice I could only say, “Thank you.” Too tired to think. Too tired to speak. My only need was sleep. But her love and care touched me in the night and I knew, “I am not alone; goodness and mercy are with me now.” I recognized her as one of my angels.
