THE MOON DOCTOR: Memories That Help Us Change

She listened to the steady pounding of her feet along the roads. And after a while, she could feel it running in her veins, something that turned backward to rituals of spring–Lent, events of her childhood, painting rain-washed colors on hard boiled eggs. The sky would scuttle from grey to blue to grey, rain spitting just as intermittently. But the air was becoming velvet, enveloping, warming the skin, and when she walked now, crunching spring detritus, a hollowness opened inside her, a sweet opening as if she were also ready to suffer, to feel pain, to live and embrace it all. (from The MOON DOCTOR)

When the son of a very close friend (I will refer to him as David) was severely burned in a house fire, I wrote a novel, THE MOON DOCTOR, to deal with my emotions concerning this horrific event. Watching how this child suffered and how THE FIRE changed all their lives…sent me to the keyboard to make some sense of it. But I struggled with the story, with the characters. And THE MOON DOCTOR has never been published. What started as a tight story, began to wander, as if I could not pin it down…too many characters, too many plot points, all that sorrow. Today, it sits in a drawer. (I did enter a hospital scene in a contest, but heard nothing. I guess no one was ready for a burn victim and his doctor, who simply appeared at his bedside to help him accept his changed life.)

But I glad that I wrote that novel, found empathy in my characters, and that in real life, David and I forged an even closer friendship when we both went through Nursing School… together. Being in a house fire and surviving, can make you intensely aware of the human body…its strengths and weaknesses. David’s empathy was unmatched, he calmed his patients, explained his scars, shared his life. 

WE LIVE OUR STORIES

But much later, as an RN in an inner city Chicago hospital, I had the privilege of working on the maternity unit with doctors, nurses, interns and patients of many different religious and racial backgrounds. We were a team, and there was NEVER a provoking incident due to racial or physical differences…until….

One Sunday, I received a patient, worked up her chart, drew blood, assessed the fetus, helping her through early stages of  labor. THIS, before her husband arrived at the hospital. He took one look at me and left the room. Moments later the charge nurse called me out, telling me I had been relieved of my duties with this patient. The husband had requested another nurse.

I learned that if he had his choice, no one would have been able to help birth his child, but now, faced with being in a hospital and having to choose the personnel available, he wanted an African American nurse. At first I didn’t understand, later being told that his choice had more to do with his Muslim faith, than whether I was a capable RN. The nurse who took my place was excellent. She had been in the trenches for years. My patient was in good hands.

ANOTHER DOCTOR…No Matter Our Skin Color, We All Need CARE.  

I had a wonderful friend, a doctor from South Africa, who worked during the time Black doctors couldn’t take care of white women. This made me remember a college text that dealt with racism. The author said right out that racism messes up our brains, and that how we are raised contributes greatly to racist feelings and reactions–locking a car door, avoiding getting in an elevator because of who is occupying it, the unaccounted for fear that lurks somewhere in the brain, because of a newspaper headlines or the words of some people you meet during life. 

Jim Grimsley, a white man, wrote a book about his own experiences: HOW I SHED MY SKIN. The Amazon Book Blurb read in part: What Jim did not realize, until he began to meet these new students, was just how deeply ingrained his own prejudices were and how those prejudices had developed in him despite the fact that prior to starting sixth grade, he had actually never known any Black people. Jim writes that the first time he saw Ebony magazine, he was astounded: “I had never seen Black people depicted in this way before, as if they were just like white people.”  Ah yes, they are!! We can be very slow learners. 

The Bill Cosby Show was genius. It showed us white folks that the Black family was not unlike the white family or the Latino or Asian etc etc. We all have struggles raising children, working and being there for our kids, knowing when and how to deal with various problems as they become adults. (So sad that Cosby’s mistakes pushed that show back into the film can.)

But the best thing I can take from thinking and writing about these issues is to always remind myself that empathy and understanding can fill up the heart. Fear, anger will only make a person hard and mean–and in the end, probably shorten that person’s life. Watch out for the stress that messes with your heart and makes your brain believe things that just aren’t true. Despite his scars, my friend David lives his life and now has children and grandchildren.

Final thought: Consider that one to one relationship wherever you go. Make a new friendships –HE or SHE just might be from the another country…but we learn and understand more, every time we meet.