Meet Manny.
When he was little, his mom bragged about his heightened sense of empathy.
He was always bringing home stray cats, always wanting to protect the weak. As he grew, his mom began to boast about his intelligence. She thought he might become a doctor, she’d told her friends. But instead, Manny became a nurse. He preferred the practical application. He wanted to sit at a bedside and talk to people about their struggles.
Today it’s Manny whose struggling. No longer a child, he remains incredibly empathetic. Hidden beneath his scrubs, his concern for those in his care runs deep. Taught not to judge, he brushes off the comments of people who tell him, “I could never be a nurse, especially not in this day and age.”
Sure, he earns a good wage. But he feels like no matter what he tries, he can’t get back to baseline. That space where he felt like he could comfort and offer hope. That space where he was the unit jokester, the guy who made everyone laugh.
Tucking in his elderly patients or waking them up for a morning walk, he listens to old wartime stories about days gone by – he knows what a difference that kind of connection makes in their lives.
When forced to work double or triple shifts, he takes his little girl back and forth, from school to his parents, without whom he’d never be able to manage. Many nights, he arrives home after she’s gone to bed. When he does, he scrubs off the day, showers away sickness and grief and crawls into bed beside her. He closes his eyes and prays she becomes a dancer or a zoo keeper; he closes his eyes and sees the faces of patients he’s lost. Faces he made laugh, told everything would be okay.
Manny’s kindness is anything BUT weakness. There isn’t any such thing as a weak nurse. He couldn’t do this job if he was, it would destroy him.
Because he cares so deeply, he’s not giving up. It means too much to him. It means he’s voted in favour of a strike.
