Walter Reed Army Institute of Nursing - Pledge Yearbook (Washington, DC)

Page 8 text:

Nursing is . . -nazi

Page 7 text:

2 A

Page 9 text:

With my hands I have told a dying and premature infant that I loved him, and was rewarded when his fretful cries subsided, and he lapsed into something akin to contentment. I have cringed at the confusion in the face of a burned child who was learning the nature of pain - no longer beautiful, no longer loved. I have cared for a battered child and held her young mother while she wept out her shame. I have looked on while a teenager dissolved into bitterness because the world had shrunk to the size of his own body and his body was nothing but torture, Iooked on because I had failed to convince him that the world was still large enough for hope. With undiminished excitement, I have watched again and again the birth of a child, and I have despaired at the defeat of a mother who wanted a baby more than life. Sitting in a silent room I have responded nonverbally to a lone woman's fear of death and learned that the room was not silent at all. I have listened on locked words to hate and crushing fear, and I have seen in healthy bodies, soul's shattered pieces. I have given as much as I could muster and often found that lacking. But there I was taught that one can give only what one has, and that flinching does not add to the store of gifts. I have felt the growing lonliness of the old and ached to give them dignity, to show them my glowing world, but often my young tongue did not speak the language of their old ears. I have stood and watched the last pulse fade in a man, despite the strength of those who sought to preserve it. I have cried stinging tears for all I could not do, have been humbled again and again by failure, by the knowledge that my strongest wish was not enough. And now I am asked to re-evaluate my reasons for entering nursing. Am I sat- isfied? disappointed? disillusioned? How can I answer? I know that in the beginning I chose an image, a fancied ideal. I drifted into nursing with some vague desire to do a significant thing and for a while I fought it because it hurt so much. At some point decision no longer mattered. I never really chose nursing, even when I learned to know it, I just became a nurse. - Rebecca Lee Beam 5