Tea with miss Elsie: When the nurse becomes the guest

摘要

Her eyes eagerly returned to my face. She blinked once. Miss Elsie, the reclining hostess, sipped tea through an antiquated straw, and I, the invited guest, sipped tea from a blue glass. How easy it would have been to ignore the little wooden shelf, adorned with the simple means of connecting two people. But then I would have betrayed what it meant to nurse someone, to be there, to surrender to the needs of my patient.Not long after that visit, Miss Elsie died. What remains with me is the memory of taking tea with her one hot July afternoon, in a tiny shaded space cooled by a whirring fan—the lavender scent of her pillows, the curled comma of her body, the rhythmic billowing of her gown, the glass straw, her eyes lit from within.