Becoming Human (Pt.1)

I started working in the Emergency Room about one and a half years ago.

When someone asks me why I chose the ER, I often answer that I love volunteering there, that the nurses and hospital personnel are close, like family.

But reader, you are wise: you know I am avoiding the question. I am not revealing my initial reasons for entering the ER, I am listing why it has been a rewarding experience.

A hospital volunteer has many responsibilities, many of them left unmentioned on orientation days. A volunteer primarily is assigned, and preforms, tasks that include folding, transportation, cleaning, attempting to provide a little relief to the nurses.

But the most important thing for a hospital volunteer to do is something that few will remind you of, or emphasize in your training. You must be human.

This is the hardest part. Counterintuitive, I know; we are all human, and yet few of us act that way.

So I made the effort to become human. Two years ago, when I was volunteering at the medical surgery ward, I was a novice, but I refused to let any weakness overcome me. When I observed a patient, staring at the wall, I used to wait outside their door. I breathed deeply, reminding myself that I was no intruder upon their privacy; I was a volunteer now.

When I enter the hospital, I cast off the cloaks of my different selves. I am not anyone's daughter, sister, student, friend, or athlete. The moment I walk into the building, I assume the responsibility of representing the hospital, their personnel, and the quality of their service. Putting on my shirt and ID card, I become just one thing; a hospital volunteer.

And then I would step into the patient's room and ask them if they need anything, if I can restock supplies. If they voice a concern, I become very attentive. Sometimes there is a lull in the activity and we start off a great conversation, and I sit awhile, listening to their life story. A patient played his guitar for me once. Anything to distract them from their situation, even if it is just for a moment.

The ER was a challenge to see if I could create the same connection with patients that would be zipping in and out in a very busy environment, with less time to develop a sense of familiarity. It would be different from the medical surgery ward, and I wanted to see how well I could adapt.

The change of pace was new, but I got used to it fast. Soon I was as comfortable there as I had been anywhere else in the hospital.

The Suicide Club

It deeply saddens me that I can not remember the last time I read a book.

So what have I been doing? Homework, spending many hours planning for our upcoming UFU event, basketball, college interviews and applications, chores, eating, sleeping (yes, sleeping)…

Since when did it become a lesser priority to nourish our intellect with something unique and powerful and transformative, a form of media that rips us out of our reality and neatly plops us in a world of our own creation – and the author’s? A form of telepathy, because the author is not there and yet we are reading their thoughts under their words, and sometimes, when they are a good author, it feels they are reading ours.

But, as you know, I am lying on one point of technicality- of course we all remember the last time we read a book, especially if you miss reading books whenever you wish, like I do.

I have never read a book when I wanted to. In fact, I always end up reading books when I explicitly do not want to, when I would really rather be doing something else. It always seems I find myself with a book over the summer, when there is barely any time to do anything. Last summer, my lab work and my trip to the delta not only considerably aged me in positive and negative ways, but also left me with half a week to myself in which a cherished relative chose to visit, and so my peace was happily ruined.

And over the summer I also happen to get cravings for books right when I am about to dive into the covers of my bed, especially because the suspense of post-apocalyptic books is often intensified in the delirium of the early hours of the morning. As are Harry Potter books, which all who bought each and every one at midnight probably understand.

And so the last time I caught myself sneaking a volume and a light into my world of adventure and extravagance, the volume’s title was The Suicide Club, written by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Far from entertaining any ludicrous ideas about my taste in literature, one should be curious as to what eccentric lengths I must have gone to obtain such an eccentric book.

Well I didn’t, I just checked it out at the library, but if I must say anything, then I will say it is a very unusual read that will probably change your entire mentality about the way typical, Western classics are written.