by Chinazo Echezona-Johnson

Created on: February 17, 2009

It was just another busy night in the labor and delivery unit. Nurses were running around trying to give report to the oncoming shift; doctors were yelling that they needed another operating room opened for a cesarean section; babies were coming almost every minutes; families were laughing , congratulating each other; and as for the exhausted mothers, well- they kept on pushing and delivering babies.

I got my assignment. I had to get report from Cathy, the nicest and the most unflustered nurse on the unit. Before she started the report, she took my hands, looked me deeply in the eyes and smiled. Cathy had one of those smiles that could put a smile on the nastiest doctor on the unit, Dr. Jandi.

"My dear, you will love this patient. She is very nice. Her only problem is that she needs attention. I asked Susan to assign her to you. She needs a young nurse like you."

My heart skipped a little. I was just a year out of nursing school. I was lucky to be accepted as a staff nurse at one of the country's leading teaching hospitals. The obstetrical unit was number one in the country, and specializes in high risk and textbook cases. I worked with doctors and nurses that were leaders in their field. In fact, I learned everyday that I was at that unit. However, nothing prepared me for my experience that night.

Before Cathy could give me the report, we heard screaming coming from my patient room. It was as if somebody was being burned by fire. All the available staff ran to the room. Nothing prepared me for what I saw next. The private room was in semidarkness, but I could make out the female form writhing on the bed and yelling obscenities. Don't get wrong. Yelling and cursing is a normal occurrence in the unit but not like this. This person in the bed was not in physical pain, she just wanted to be heard. Her screeching sounded like feeding time at the local zoo.

Somebody turned on the lights, and my heart skipped! Shackled to the bed was a girl/woman. I call her girl/woman because even though her pregnant belly was straining with the weight of her unborn baby, this patient was still a girl. Her underdeveloped breasts were hardly protruding from her chest; her face still had the soft innocence of a child, and the hair on her pubis area was still fine and hardly visible. The one thing that stood out from her face was her eyes. Her eyes were aged as if she had the worries of the whole world. It was filled with fear, sadness, and mistrust. I could see that she was holding back

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