Expression and effort for others | Hey, you who don’t have a summer vacation

Stethoscope pockets. pockets for notes. That outfit you hang your watch on. That watch you got as a gift from your dad or girlfriend or simply bought for yourself the day you got your degree.

This outfit has phone pockets.

The phone that rings almost nonstop. The one who wants you to be in all places at the same time. The person who tells you that someone somewhere needs more help than the patient you are examining or caring for now.

You tie your shoes every morning, evening, or day to walk kilometer after kilometer. mile after mile.

Not in the mountains as many of us do now. Not the streets of Rome or the beach parade in Nice. Not in the shopping center in Marbella or in the Louvre in Paris.

But in the corridors.

Corridors between many rooms. Rooms where people who knew the truth of life and brutality lie. The room in which the child lies with a broken arm or leg. Cracked after jumping on a trampoline on a late summer evening, or falling off a bike on the biggest adventure of the holiday, on a slalom racetrack in the thick of a thicket. The room where the mother was just told that the tumor in her chest was cancer.

The room where the family says their last goodbye. Farewell to a father who was suddenly transferred in a traffic accident. The room where the alarm goes off after a man in his fifties developed chest pains and heavy breathing, now in cardiac arrest. A room where a 78-year-old grandmother receives help nursing a wound that won’t heal, or a grandfather gets pain relief in a hip he’s just had.

Thousands of rooms in Norway’s many hospitals are ready for people who understand that life never takes a summer vacation.

The child who feels the doctor’s hand on his shoulder, telling you that the broken arm will unfortunately need to be operated on, but it will be fine in the end. A doctor who has a child of the same age. Who also loves to jump on a trampoline on late summer evenings.

A teen feels a stroke from an anesthesiologist in her upper arm while she sleeps, so surgeons can thread her shin bone together like smoke on a zig zag hill.

The mother who carefully and sympathetically gets a Kleenex in her hand from a doctor who solemnly tells her in her voice that she has breast cancer.

The family, in the room where the lights are on, and the father is ready with careful and respectful hands.

The hands that hug their children are so tight when they come home because they know how unpredictable life can be.

The man in his fifties who feels life is slipping by, but is saved by a team of trained people with one focus; To make this heart beat again.

Grandma who hears the soothing voice of the assistant nurse who expertly cleans and cares for a wound that never heals.

The old man who is given a cup of water in one hand and a cup of painkillers in the other. Painkillers from the nurse looking at the watch she got from her mom and dad. The nurse who knows he will have to get another dose in 4 hours.

So for those of you who don’t take a summer vacation:

Thanks!

A million times thank you very much!

I know it costs, and I know how hard days can be. I get it. I have seen him.

I have tested it.

Just know that every pat on the arm, every delicate look, the bed that’s made, the floor being washed and the safe hand on the shoulder, are noticed.

You will notice.

I hope that you and your costume, with his many pockets, walk mile after mile between all the rooms, while the rest of us wander carelessly, unaware of where and when we will need your hand, also find time to sit in the wall of the sun.

you deserve it.

Good watch, happy summer!