Weeks after my graduation from nursing school, I still couldn’t find a hospital job. I couldn’t wait to put my studies to practical use and start helping others. In a way it felt like my education was only beginning. Or it would begin, if only a hospital would hire me.
Meantime I took a job providing home care to a lady named Millie.
Millie had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis—Lou Gehrig’s disease. She was in a wheelchair, unable to move or talk, and she didn’t have long to live. There was no hope for improvement. “We know she’ll never do the things she used to,” Millie’s husband, Thurber, told me my first day on the job.
I looked around Millie’s living room. It was full of evidence of the life she used to lead: pictures of her and Thurber with their daughters on cruises, needlepoint pillows that must have taken months to make. Millie had obviously been a person who made the most of every single day.
I couldn’t give any of that back to her, so what was I doing here? What can I learn from a job like this? I thought.
“Millie likes having someone to talk to,” Thurber said. My face must have shown surprise—Millie couldn’t talk. “We have a system,” Thurber explained.
“Go through the alphabet. When you get to the letter she wants, she’ll blink once. Write all the letters down. When you’ve spelled a complete word, Millie will blink twice.”
“I’ll try,” I promised. But the process was so slow, I discovered in the coming days, I kept talking to a minimum. Just getting Millie fed was an ordeal. Her choices were fairly limited to soup and shakes, liquids she could suck through a straw.
Lord, this patient is not going to recover, I prayed as I arrived at Millie’s house one afternoon. She’s hopeless. I want to find a job where I can learn to be a better nurse.
But until I found that job, I had made a commitment to Millie. When I put my purse down on the kitchen table I noticed a pile of papers, notes from an earlier conversation between her and Thurber. I flipped through them, amazed at the effort that went into them.
Whenever I tried to go through the alphabet with Millie I couldn’t stop myself from trying to guess what she wanted before she finished. More often than not I just wound up confused.
Today I’ll try Thurber’s way, I told myself. No matter how long it takes. After all, it wasn’t as if I had other patients to attend to, or medicine to give out. This wasn’t the hospital.
At dinnertime I went to the cupboard. “What kind of soup would you like?” I asked. “Bean and bacon? Cream of chicken?” Let Millie tell you what she wants, I reminded myself. It was just so much easier to reel it all off myself.
I picked up the notepad and took a deep breath. “A…” Millie blinked. That was easy enough. I started again. This time she chose “P.” AP? I thought. There are no soups that start with AP. She must want apple sauce. I itched to grab the apple sauce jar, but I’d vowed to let her spell out the entire request.
Her next letter proved me wrong about the apple sauce. I was glad I hadn’t jumped the gun.
“Apricot chicken?” I said finally. “That can’t be right, can it? Do you really want apricot chicken, Millie? You can’t eat solid food.”
I went through the alphabet again. The process was just as slow the second time around, but it was a lot more interesting when I knew Millie’s answer could surprise me. It was more like having a real conversation. “Blender,” she said.
“Oh!” It didn’t sound very appetizing. Millie must have read my mind: “I’m tired of soup!” she said. Unfortunately, I could only cook the basics. “I haven’t done any fancy cooking since junior high home ec,” I confessed.
Somehow that got Millie excited. “I’ll teach you!” she said. “Like I did my girls.”
Teach me? How was she going to do that? One letter at a time, that’s how, I thought. “Okay, Millie, tell me what to do.”
Millie kept her instructions short and simple. I had no trouble performing each step. By dinnertime I was lifting apricot-scented chicken out of the oven—and it was delicious. Maybe I wouldn’t become a better nurse on this job, but I would become a better cook.
Millie sipped her portion through a straw and grinned. “The last nurse burnt the chicken.”
“I was sure that was going to happen to me,” I said, laughing.
“I’ll teach you some fancy needlepoint stitches when we’ve mastered cooking,” she said.
“I can’t wait.”
Millie soon had me doing things I didn’t imagine I could ever do. Like set an elegant table for dinner, complete with napkins folded like birds-of-paradise. Such skills had nothing to do with nursing, of course, but at least I was learning something on this job.
“Apricot chicken,” I read off the familiar recipe card one night. Luckily Millie never got tired of it. “Serves one to one hundred.”
Millie blinked for my attention. “Let’s do it!” she said.
“Do what?”
“Have a party!”
A party? Was she kidding? Of course not. Not Millie. She made a guest list and dispatched me downtown to buy presents: a special book for her husband, a robe for an old family friend, a tie for her doctor. “Find a pair of hoop earrings for yourself,” she said. “All the girls are wearing them now.”
By the time we’d all gathered around the table for apricot chicken, I knew it was going to be a successful evening. Millie beamed at me from her wheelchair at the head of the table. Thurber patted her hand from his place next to her.
My earlier attitude made me feel ashamed. I’d thought Millie’s situation was hopeless, as if the fact that she had so little time left meant she might as well already be dead. Yet when I thought back on the weeks we’d had together, they were some of the best in my life.
Millie had taught me that even a single day could be precious if you used it well. I’d learned something that all my years of nursing school hadn’t taught me.
Eventually I got a call from the Veterans Association. I’d been selected for a staff nurse position on a medical unit. Millie was so happy for me.
The day I started my new job, I called to check on her before leaving home. She had died peacefully in her sleep the night before. She was with the angels in heaven now. But her spirit guided me every day of my long career.
She had made me a better nurse, an answer to my prayer. All my patients had the pleasure of a little bit of Millie under my care.
Try Millie's Apricot Chicken recipe for yourself!
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