Graf #1

These hands are for different purposes. They are left unattended and ignored. They are meant to work and to work hard. They are allowed to remain chapped around the fleshy pads from constant snatches of alcohol wipes while on the run towards the next patient. Nails cut short. Nails cut often. Every nick and cut addressed as a possible means of passing or obtaining infection.

These are nursing hands. The femininity suggested by the delicacy and length is only the packaging to the much more brusque and socially unspoken tasks they attend to.

Today, these hands pulled up the stockings of a fat man too winded to bend over. Today they held a woman's head while she vomited due to aspiration of a soggy piece of carrot. Today they washed a woman's breasts and vagina because she has forgotten what her hands are for. A hundred little tasks. Pour medications, deliver, attend to any bodily function occurring at the time, turn around, pour medications.

Sometimes, these hands will cradle a phone against my ear to listen to a family member scream obscenities out of frustration or making keening wails as we discuss funeral arrangements.

These hands have occasionally been known to thrust out wildly to grab at any article of clothing possible as a patient begins to fall. These hands can override my brain and the training it's incurred, the logic that tells me I could get hurt by preventing someone from going down. These hands just can't seem to swallow the idea of a face making contact with the floor if they can grab for something, anything.

And, at times, at the most perfect and luxurious times, these hands have slipped themselves into the hand of a patient as we walk down the hall together, these hands leading them to find a room that they will always lose.