In Praise of Nurses: There When I Needed Them Most

In my mind they are my nurses, probably because they were there for me in my darkest days.

They were on hand, for example, back when my father was lying in a bed, dying, gasping and doing the death throttle—that awful breathing-but-just-barely sound that someone really should have warned me about beforehand. I asked the nurse if this was as bad as it looked, or really as it sounded. Was I right to be freaked out by this awful scene? She said, without hesitation, yes. Was this as terrible as I thought it was? She said yes. And so I knew I wasn’t crazy. I was just looking at my father looking at the abyss.

More than a decade later, one of these miracle people walked me out of the room where my other parent was dying. The woman suggested we should chat. But it wasn’t one of those doctor conversations, where the word comes down from on high. This was a nurse talk, where they ask if they can help. I appreciate doctors, on occasion. I love nurses. Doctors have given me information and made smart decisions—and, a few times, incisions. Nurses have given me care.

Both of my parents died with fantastic views they never actually saw of the Hudson River, in the Milstein Hospital Building of New York-Presbyterian. In both situations, the nurses were whip-smart. (The doctors less so.) In my mother’s case, in October 2023, a woman took my sister and me into an alcove office and asked about my mom’s likes and dislikes, the work she did, what mattered to her, what she loved. This was the work of the palliative care team. There was a real effort to connect to the patient, even, and perhaps especially, if she was never going home. We said our mother was a former bookstore owner, independent (well, until now) and a lover of plants. The next time I visited my mom’s room two nurses were hanging colorful paper plants, framing that river view. I took a picture. I still have it on my phone.

Montefiore and Mount Sinai nurses were the first strikers to head back at work, and on Feb. 26 the strike that began on Jan. 12 ended also for about 4,000 nurses at New York-Presbyterian.

I am glad it’s over. I kept thinking, during the past month-plus, that I should be taking hot coffee or doughnuts or, well, something to the picket lines. But I told myself I have classes to teach and stuff to do. And those TV shows aren’t going to stream themselves.

And so I sat on the sidelines and felt guilty, knowing I’ll need a nurse next month when I have shoulder surgery.

So many times and in so many ways, nurses have helped me take the next, needed step. They’re good at bad conversations. They’re adaptive, able to shift their responses depending on what was needed and who was needing it. They deal, usually well, with dramatically different people.

Just weeks ago, I was comforted by two different nurses at another hospital, NYU Langone Health, the one that is betraying trans people now by knuckling under to the Trump Administration’s hateful policies. Two nurses there talked me through, before and during, a stressful MRI. (Is there another kind?)

The nurses made things less scary. That’s what they do. They handle the hard work, and sometimes they also handle paper flowers.

Christopher Moore, a former editor of Our Town and the West Side Spirit, is a writing program adjunct at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.