Vodka Gimlet Anyone?

OKAY, THE PIG HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE STORY...I JUST THINK SHE'S CUTE.

One of the first nurses I worked with when I started on the evening shift was Carrie Ellen Hair, a 72 year old woman who had never married. This was in 1967 and we were still required to wear white dress uniforms and nurse’s caps, but Carrie Ellen looked like she was stuck in the 1930’s. She was a petite, slender little woman who wore her short graying brown hair in a bob. Her white nurse’s uniforms were starched crisply. They buttoned at the neck, and the long sleeves buttoned at her wrists. Her skirts stopped at mid-calf length. Perched on her head was an enormous nurse’s cap with several black stripes running horizontally and a school pin tacked on one of the “wings”. She wore white support stockings and white nurse’s shoes. Her fingernails were cut as short as they could possibly be, and she never wore a trace of makeup.

Carrie Ellen ran a tight ship on the ward, too. She bustled around and made sure everyone was doing their assigned jobs. She didn’t tolerate slacking off on the job. The hospital was a county hospital and there were a number of slackers that worked there, so they kept Carrie Ellen quite busy.

I was a Licensed Vocational Nurse at the time so I was either the treatment nurse or the medication nurse, depending on the whim of the other LVN I worked with. I was the new kid in town so I just did what I was told. I worked hard and was a fast learner, so over time, Carrie Ellen took me under her wing and became my mentor.

Carrie Ellen was such a prim and proper little woman that I was shocked the evening she invited me to her apartment after work for a vodka gimlet. She whispered the invitation to me and asked me to please never tell anyone about it. I went, and enjoyed a frosty vodka gimlet in Carrie Ellen’s tidy apartment. She told me about her life and family in Texas, and made me promise again not to ever let anyone know she had an occasional drink. I suspected it was more than occasional because they tasted pretty darned good.

A couple of years later, Carrie Ellen retired and moved back to Texas to be near her family. She kept in touch for awhile and had gotten a part time job working in a nursing home in Texas. She just couldn’t give up her nursing career. It was how she defined herself and she would have been lost without it.