When I first began volunteering with hospice, I had trouble communicating with patients. It went beyond not being able to understand what they were saying, or not knowing how to respond – I felt incredibly awkward, out of place, and unnatural at their bedside. I didn’t have the instinct some of my fellow volunteers had, to speak to them in measured tones and stroke their arms gently. Instead, I sat by as someone else – surely destined to be a better doctor than I, I thought – took the reins of the conversation, smoothly transitioning from how the patient was feeling, to the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, to what was for lunch that day.
It takes me a while to warm up to people, and patients were no exception. Sister B, as her title implies, was religious, and was known to sing hymns from her past. Indeed, I heard her hum them under her breath, sometimes accompanied by the soft patter of prayer recited almost automatically. Sister B was almost always awake and aware, but rarely did she seem to be present in this world. Each time we visited her at the nursing facility, she seemed convinced that she was somewhere else. She would ask us questions, over and over again: Did you drive here? Did you buy it from the shop? Is it raining outside?
Yet when a staff member walked by her wheelchair, parked in front of the TV in the common room, it was like she was jolted back to the present. “He’s a nice guy,” she would say. “She’s nice.”
I visited Sister B nearly every week. Once, she thought she was a teacher at a school, encouraging me to take a look around the campus. Another time, she wanted me to pick up something across the hallway, and when I pantomimed lifting and putting down a box, she nodded and appeared satisfied. I came back up to her chair, and she extended her hand towards me. I took it. “It’s cold,” she said, harshly, and made a face. I laughed. It became a kind of joke we had each week, my hand, cold from the outdoors, holding hers, warm from the heat of her small room. The chill of my hand was like the staff member walking by – it seemed to jolt Sister B, and her face would turn in a not unpleasant way. It was like she knew something that I didn’t, knew something about why my hand was cold. She beckoned me closer to her. “We may be small, but we’ll get there,” she said. “We’ll get there.”
Her feet, stuffed in black sneakers and perpetually crossed at the ankle, fidgeted in attempt to make her statement come true. She repeated it a few more times, looking at me straight in the eyes, allowing me to scrutinize the crusts on her eyelids and the liver spots dotting her cheeks. Sister B seemed convinced that indeed, she would get there, and that I would get there with her.
But just as soon as it began, the moment of clarity faded. “God loves you,” she incanted. “God loves you, too,” I assured her weakly. A few minutes later, we had to leave. But her words, lucid or not, kept replaying in my mind. We’ll get there – get where, exactly? Get to the point where I’ll feel natural talking to patients, strangers, from the moment I see them? Get to medical school, which was looming over my future? Somewhere else? I blew on my hands to warm up in the chilly winter air.