There is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to quality nurses, even if the barrel they come in has one or two that fall somehow short. Bea was not one who left anything to be desired. She used a magical touch to dissolve problems. She turned a horrendously bad day into a happy, memorable one. And she did that quickly and quietly as if there were nothing easier. Perhaps there was nothing easier for her.

Bea lives about twenty minutes from the hospital, and about twenty minutes from where I am typing this. If I see her again, I hope it’s at the market, not at the hospital. She is the mother of two and a loving wife. She seems to be going in many directions at once. But she cuts right through to the necessity of things with a disarming smile, which is my idea of the ideal nurse. She comes from an extended Latina family with brothers and sisters and cousins and aunts, and her husband is a handyman covering a number of cities or towns including the one I live in. I have a family that barely exists, so I truly enjoy hearing about kids and husbands and all that.

She didn’t come to see if I needed anything, she came to see how I was doing. And every time she asked, I felt a tiny bit better. It didn’t last, but it lasted for two wonderful days, which is why I’m posting this picture and writing this blog. They say not to judge a book by its cover, but I must say that Bea has a very nice cover. I hate the nurse who sent my post surgical lunch back for a bowl of soup, and then left the person who had had no food and almost no water for eighteen hours to wait one more hour for see-through broth. But I felt that Bea was incapable of such insensitivity. She listened to me complain for a good ten minutes and then said, “Well, let’s solve that problem.”

I read these words and realize they seem nothing like the memories that I have barely captured. Good things are like that.