Mountain Men's Nanny

1 - Brie

Things Fall Apart

~

Brie

I wanted to get the EPI pen out of the drawer and administer the medication as I’d done so many times before; instead, I’d just stood there unable to breathe while the pediatric ward blurred into swirls of pastel blue and white, and the voices turned into distant murmurs I couldn’t make out.

“Brie?” I felt a warm hand on my shoulder, and my lungs slowly filled with oxygen, enough to steady my vision and bring me somewhat back into the present.

“Have we lost her?” I asked, feeling the tears burn behind my eyes.

“Who?” Dominic, the head matron, asked, already leading me to a bench with the same concerned look she reserved for patients.

“I— I don’t know what happened,” I stammered.

I had played the scene over and over again in my mind: the paramedics rushing through our ward with little Kiara lying still on the stretcher, her tiny body hardly filling the little mattress with her lips pursed and blue.

There was nothing I could have done differently.

It was too late for her. But still. Her mother’s wailing and her father’s desperate pleas for help and answers haunted me.

It was part of what we did here. We helped kids, sent them back to their parents, and left them healthier, living, breathing proof that everything would be okay.

I knew it didn’t always work out that way, but it wasn’t supposed to be that way for me.

The heart monitor sounding the end of a life cut off much too soon broke something in me.

It made me question everything I thought I knew about myself and this job.

“The first is always the hardest,” Dominic said gently, the wisdom of having seen this before clear in her voice. “Maybe you should take some time off, come to terms with it before you get back to work.”

I was already questioning if I could keep doing this, knowing I would see many more Kiaras slip away, but I stubbornly shook my head.

I had wanted to be a peds nurse for as long as I could remember, and I just wasn’t ready to let that dream die.

I wanted to help children, make them feel better than when I first met them. It was all I had.

“I know it sounded like a suggestion, but the truth is, you aren’t much help here in this state. Go home, take a bath, and when you start feeling like yourself again, the hospital will still be here. There’ll be many more kids who need your help,” she said, squeezing my shoulder.

I stood up and watched the pediatric ward where I had worked after years of dreaming and studying.

Everyone else seemed to be getting on with their work; it was business as usual.

They hadn’t held Kiara’s hand through rounds of tests month after month, watching her parents stare helplessly as their daughter struggled, then again watched them fill with hope when a heart that should have worked was found.

They hadn’t stroked Kiara’s cheek and promised her the new heart would make her ‘all better’.

That was me. I shared their joy when the surgery was a success and watched helplessly as her body rejected it with no words of hope or wisdom to soothe them.

Even though I knew I couldn’t survive anything like that again, I walked to the nurses’ room to get my bag and told myself I would come back stronger; I could still make a difference.

I drove to my apartment on autopilot. I may have teleported there.

One moment, I was in the parking lot, staring through the windshield, and the next I was in my living room, realizing I had never really fully moved in here, never claimed this space as mine.

It didn’t feel like a home. It was just a space I came to between shifts to pick at whatever I found in my fridge, shower, and sleep.

It was hardly a home; no pictures on the walls, none of the quirky little trinkets I had planned to put on the shelves, and most of my things still neatly packed in boxes. It was the last place I wanted to be and definitely not the kind of place I would go to run away from my thoughts.

I sat down on the couch, struggling to get comfortable, and turned on my phone. It instantly pinged with messages I’d missed.

“I heard what happened. Do you want to talk about it?” My best friend, Holly, tried to call but settled for a text instead and was still typing.

“These things happen. Let’s meet for ice cream and get you back in fighting shape.”

I already knew how the conversation would go.

But my mindless drive had ingrained in me the very real possibility that, despite my love for my job, I wasn’t cut out for what happened when the work we did just wasn’t enough.

I wasn’t like Dominic, who could drown her grief in coffee and just get on with her work.

A long bath wouldn’t steel my heart against future pain.

I scrolled through my phone a little longer before getting back to Holly. Emails, job ads, newsletter subscriptions I never opened and don’t remember signing up for, and a LinkedIn notification. It was never anything urgent, but something told me to open it.

I sent Holly a text to let her know we could meet at the ice cream parlor in an hour, then ran a bath, opened the bubble bath that had sat full and neglected on the edge of my bathtub for months, and poured a generous amount into the tub.

I stepped out of my scrubs and watched them lying in a pile on the floor; it already felt like a last goodbye in the stillness, steam filling the room.

In the tub, I read the job post. The poster was looking for a nanny for a little girl, someone with medical experience and willing to move to a private, remote cabin in the woods. It sounded idyllic, just what I needed. A getaway that paid the bills.

I stepped into the bath and settled in, letting the warm, soapy water wash over my skin, the hot water sending a delicate tingling through me, replacing the crisp fall chill that had shrouded me all day.

I must have drifted off thinking about how good it would feel to be out of the city, because before I knew it, Holly was texting to let me know she was almost at the parlor, 10 minutes after we had agreed to meet.

I stepped out quickly, the chill now feeling like freshness, and threw on a pair of jeans and a light sweater before heading to meet her.

Thoughts of morning hikes, mountain views, and clean, fresh air filled the two blocks’ walk. It brought a smile to my lips, one that felt only half guilty. I hadn’t been this excited since I first stepped into the hospital as a newly minted pediatric nurse.

When I got to the ice cream parlor, Holly was still wearing her scrubs with a sweater pulled over them.

“Since when are you ever late?” she smiled as soon as she saw me, hugging me tightly.

I could smell the hospital on her, the sanitizing detergents that clung to all of us even after a shift was over.

“I fell asleep in the bath,” I said, leading the way to the counter.

We always ordered the same thing: a banana split with extra nuts, no matter the season.

It was a habit we picked up after bad breakups in college and just never shook.

Banana splits after a hard exam, after a long shift, before a hard life decision.

One winter, we kept the ice cream parlor near campus in business with our twice a week visits. It was our thing.

“First, you don’t have to be ashamed for struggling through this. We all loved Kiara, and we all thought she’d pull through. You were closer to her than any of us,” Holly said, fingers knitted on the table between us.

She had practiced this, I could tell.

“First?” I asked. “So there’s more?”

“Of course there’s more,” she laughed and reached for my hand. “You’re a brilliant nurse, which is why you feel the loss so deeply. I don’t know anyone who can connect with our little patients like you do.”

I nodded, taking it all in and waiting for the perfect time to tell her about the crazy idea I’d had. I mulled it over while Holly went on about how the hospital should take better care of its staff. Indefinite leave just wasn’t enough…

“I saw a job post that sounds perfect for me,” I blurted out.

Holly pulled her hand back, her brows creasing quizzically just as a waitress put our splits on the table with a smile.

“What are you talking about?” she asked. “A different hospital? Look, these things happen at every—”

“No.” I shook my head. I knew she wouldn’t approve. “Not a hospital. It’s a position as a nanny.”

I should have used “home assistant” or something to soften the blow. Too late.

Holly cringed. “A nanny? After years of studying, sleepless nights, practically living in the campus library, student debt up the wazoo… You want to be a nanny?”

It sounded like a waste, and Holly’s words only made it more real.

I was seriously considering walking away from a career I’d invested everything in.

All of myself, not just money. It wasn’t something I would do lightly, but there was nothing light about the fear that gripped me every time I saw a little girl with blonde curls on a stretcher and had to remind myself it wasn’t Kiara.

There was no light in me, panicking every time the first course of medication we administered didn’t instantly work.

Feeling like it was all happening again was draining.

“I just need some time away. It isn’t permanent,” I said, trying to convince her it wasn’t as bad as she thought. Convincing myself I could walk back into a hospital in the not-too-distant future and not have Kiara haunt me.

Holly scooped the ice cream into her mouth and stared me down while she swallowed, giving us both a moment to think about what I had just said.

“I don’t know, Brie. You worked really hard to get where you are, and I know how much you’ve always wanted to be a pediatric nurse. Why can’t you just take the leave, visit museums, travel a little, and see your family? It will get better, I promise.” She was almost pleading.

I shook my head and scrolled through my phone to show her the application. “Look, it’s not just an ordinary nanny job. I’d be making more than what I do now, and I’d be enjoying a winter in the mountains.”

Holly looked at the screen, refusing to be convinced. “You know as well as I do that nursing was never about the money.”

But I couldn’t forget how helpless I felt as Kiara slipped away right in front of me.

I mixed chocolate sauce into the melting ice cream in my bowl and ate it; the cold sweetness affirmed my resolve.

“I’m applying for the job,” I announced decisively.