I don’t usually take selfies at work, but the shift I got this news, I was feeling sad and thoughtful and was in the loneliest assignment on my floor, the back hallway, which I also refer to as Purgatory (not for the patients, just the nurse who cares for them). I wanted to connect with the Chaplain, so I sent him this pic. At the time it was taken, I was chowing down on a Swedish fish, which wouldn’t surprise anyone I work with.

Recently, the Chaplain shared an idea with me from C.S. Lewis’ book The Four Loves. At the time, it was interesting, but didn’t have any real application to me. Then, over the weekend I found out a former coworker had passed away unexpectedly.

The nurse who told me wanted to be able to tell someone who knew her, who would understand.

When I looked up Lewis’ concept, it goes like this:

In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets. Now that Charles is dead, I shall never again see Ronald’s reaction to a specifically Caroline joke. Far from having more of Ronald, having him “to myself” now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald. Hence true Friendship is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth, if only the newcomer is qualified to become a real friend. . .Of course the scarcity of kindred souls—not to mention practical considerations. . . —set limits to the enlargement of the circle; but within those limits we possess each friend not less but more as the number of those with whom we share him increases. . . . For every soul, seeing Him in her own way, doubtless communicates that unique vision to all the rest.

When I first heard about the idea from the Chaplain, I understood it to mean that each friend brings out a certain side of you that no one else quite does, and if that friend is lost, that part of you that is expressed in that friend is lost with the the friend. I found the actual quote fleshes it out in a slightly different way.

When I heard about the passing of my coworker, I had trouble getting into a groove for the rest of the night. My assignment wasn’t particularly difficult – or wouldn’t have been, if I had been in the right frame of mind. There was a strange trip to Pharmacy (the entrance had been temporarily moved; trying to find it was something out of Alice in Wonderland), missing Narc box keys, and based on report, the hardest patient was the easiest, and the easiest was the hardest. One of my patients slept Pippi Longstocking style, which I found amusing, although I think the reference was lost on the patient. I got through it, and things went ok.

I went home to sleep it off, and over the next day and a half, things started to sink in, and I remembered the particular things this friend had brought into my life.

When I was pregnant with Four, my coworker lent me her Harry Potter books. I read the whole series while I was pregnant and loved it so much that I named Four after one of the characters. When I came back to work after giving birth to Four, she immediately understood his name was a reference to the books. Since I didn’t name him Harry, this isn’t obvious to many people.

I ended up buying a used hardcovers of the series, the same type my coworker had lent me, and have enjoyed reading them to my older kids. I started the series with One after I read it to myself, and now am on my third go of it with Two and Three.

She introduced me to The Hunger Games, another series that kept me up late at night as I read, unable to put the books down.

When she found out I was working the night shift on my birthday, she made rainbow cupcakes for me, fashioned after my Rainbow Brite scrub top. I ended up calling in sick that night. Through bleary eyes, with a bucket close by, I saw the photo of the beautiful cupcakes tagged on social, and sorely wished I was working on my birthday instead of sick in bed.

She was there to help on my first night back after maternity leave with Five, when a tiny patient with ‘Roid Rage (steriods cause irritability and aggression in some people) started the night calmly and ended it sitting on the edge of her bed with a JP drain in her fist, pumping its rubber grenade menacingly and threatening to pull it out of her head. It took three of us to get her tiny form back into bed.

After my coworker left my hospital for another job, we stayed in touch until I left Facebook. Through social, I saw her get married. She had her first baby within weeks of me having Six.

I don’t even know her married last name. But I think about the very real part she played in my life during that time and remember her kindness and her love of books. Melissa is the only person from my job who even knew I love to read. The only things most people  at work seems to know about me is that I never know the most updated way of doing things, and I have a million kids. She and I had a different understanding, one that was a little more nuanced. I knew her as an excellent nurse and a thoughtful and generous friend, and she will be missed.