Flight Nurse

There is excitement in my room that has lasted the last three days.  As my room is used as a transient room of sorts, I have all kinds of interesting visitors stay for a few days before moving on to their final destination.  This week, I had the pleasure of sharing my room with a rather friendly Flight Nurse.  Her job over here is to fly on Medical Evacuation (MEDEVAC) fights and provide in flight care along with the Flight Medics and Flight EMTs.  The Flight Nurse position was recently created due to a need identified by MEDEVAC crews here in Afghanistan.  Since this position is new, the big Army is still trying to create the Standard Operating Procedures and protocols for this role. 

She was only supposed to stay for approximately 12 hours.  She arrived with five large duffle bags, a large ruck sack, and a carry on.  Her luggage quickly overflowed the small space allotted in our room and I found myself tripping over her stuff every time I walked in and out of the room.  Her personality made up for her vast amount of baggage as she was very friendly, happy, and appreciative.  She was a wealth of knowledge and was eager to share it with us.  Her experiences as a nurse were entertaining as she regaled us with stories from her previous deployments, emergency room experience, and her specialty the Intensive Care Unit.  My only grievance was that she didn’t stop talking.  She talked so much that the first day she was with us I went to the gym three times in seven hours to get some alone/quiet time. 

Her initial flight was cancelled, so she was with us for an additional day.  I returned from work extremely tired and found her preparing to go to the Boardwalk to grab some food after her workout.  She told me about how she killed the gym and that she was jealous of our NATO gym because it was so nice.  When she left, I fell asleep and did not give the appearance of waking up when she returned.  I was too sore from the previous day to continue my mad workouts.  When my roommate returned from work, I “woke-up” and decided to head to a dining facility.  They wanted to join me, which was fine; I probably needed to socialize a bit.  My roommate and I took her to dinner at the Asian dining facility.  While there we ran into some of our co-workers, a radiologist and a psychiatrist, and decided to eat with them so they could talk to her for a bit and give our ears a break.  
An hour later, my phone starts buzzing informing me that I have a text message.  I open my phone to see my roommate, who is seated next to me, has sent me a message that simply stated, “Let’s go!!!”  Our guest was in the middle of a story about a man that reported to the emergency room stating he had a bug in his ear.  She told us she pulled a large cockroach out of his ear and I took this opportunity to stand up, say, “That’s it, we are done here,” and start to walk out with my tray.  In true societal fashion, the rest of the table followed my lead.  As we pulled away from the never ending gab, the radiologist takes the opportunity to thank me for ending the gab.  If two of five people did not want to be there, then why did it take me to pull the plug on the social gathering? 

We received word that she was going to be picked up around 1120pm.  Knowing there would be no sleep between dinner and her departure, I decided to check out the PX and head to the gym.  I returned to the room in time to assist moving her out.  As I grabbed a duffle bag, she looks at me and says, “Oh no, that’s the heavy one!”  It was already on my back and I was not having issues with it, so I looked at her and said, “It’s fine, give me another one,” to which she responded, “But, you’re so small!”  I have a love/hate relationship with people who underestimate me.  On one hand it is insulting, but on the other hand I like seeing the surprise on their faces as I lift things twice my weight with ease. 

We all exchanged hugs as she departed.  My roommate and I executed a sigh of relief as we entered the room free of all her stuff and finally free of her chatter.  We both immediately went to bed and knocked out.  At 330am we awoke to a knock on the door.  Her flight was cancelled.  We both arose to carry all seven of her bags back into the room.  My alarm went off at 430am as usual and I did not want to move I was so tired.  The next available flight is tonight…fingers crossed that I will no longer trip over her stuff at 430 in the morning!