Camp Nurse (10 page)

Reading these notes and seeing the parents say their goodbyes made me realize how hard it must be for parents to give up control and entrust their children to the care of strangers. It brought home how huge my responsibilities would be with the children in the weeks to come and how important it would be for me to be that reassuring voice on the phone to their parents.

Most kids were handling the goodbyes fairly well, even the boy who was jumping up and down just before getting on the bus. He explained, “I’m trying to get rid of everything I learned at school.” He pulled at his scalp in an attempt to expel the offending material. The kids were coping, but the parents, not so well. I was just about to pack up my car when a mother in tears ran over and threw herself on me. “Please look after my darling babies!” She grasped my shoulders and pulled me close.

“What are your children’s names?”
So I’ll know which ones to avoid
.

“My daughter is Alexa Rose and she happens to be the prettiest girl at camp! She’s a Scorpio and her brother, Thomas Carl, is an Aries.” She handed me a bottle of pills called Ativan, a sedative. “Give Alexa Rose one at night for separation anxiety and T.C. can have one too. Oh, and give them a few drops of Rescue Remedy.” She handed me a small brown glass bottle containing a clear liquid. It was a tincture of distilled flowers that contained a touch of grape alcohol. She clutched her children before tearing herself away.

Just before the campers boarded the buses, they all reluctantly handed over their electronic games, cellphones, and portable computers. Turning in their hardware was the signal to say goodbye. Now, all each of them carried was a hefty tool chest (like the one Anderson had toted around at Camp Na-Gee-La but rarely used), as if they were carpenters, going off to a job site. These tool boxes were filled not with nails and screwdrivers but with bulk candy: bags of Nerds, jawbreakers, Sour Warheads, Cherry Blasters, Fuzzy Peaches, SweetTarts, and Skittles. The junk food policy at Camp Carson seemed to be to bring as much as you could possibly cram into the most gargantuan tool box you could find.

Alexa Rose’s mother came back to me. “I feel like I’m abandoning them,” she said as she dabbed at her tears. “This is so hard on me. I wish I was going, too.” She wrung her hands as she gazed at the departing buses. She gave herself a few drops of Rescue Remedy from her own bottle. “It’s hard to believe they can survive in that wilderness without me there to protect them.” As the buses began to pull out of the parking lot, she ran alongside, waving at her children, now beyond her reach.

Camp Carson was every bit as impressive as the video showed, but what it hadn’t conveyed was the exclusive, country club atmosphere. Even with Coach Carson’s warm welcome and private tour, I felt uncomfortably like an outsider. I focused on the beautiful surroundings and learning my way around the vast property.

The camp was built on an oval, sparkling lake. All of the facilities were situated on manicured lawns spread out over sprawling grounds. First, Coach Carson took me to the Lodge, where there was a staff lounge with a
TV
, video games, an indoor pool, and billiard and ping-pong tables. Next, we made a loop out to the camp’s periphery to see the campers’ cabins. They were
modern wood-and-log structures that had been freshly painted in forest-green, maroon, or navy-blue to denote the various units. Inside, the walls, ceiling, and rafters were made of unvarnished, light pine wood. There were eight single cots and four bunk beds, so there was space for sixteen people, usually twelve campers and four counsellors, two of whom were swim or waterski specialists, for example, and only slept in the cabin. Each cabin had its own showers and bathrooms.

We walked back to the centre of camp where the dining hall was located. It was a long, grand rectangular room with several entrances and a balcony that ran right around the outside, offering breathtaking views of Lake Serenity whichever direction you looked. It was decorated in expensive-looking, but rustic, cottage-type décor, with a stuffed moose over the stone fireplace and polished pine floors. All over the walls hung bright plaques and banners from Colour War battles and victories of days gone by, all signed by campers, many of whom were probably parents of children now attending Camp Carson.

Next, Coach Carson took me to meet Trish and Johnny and see the kitchen. It was as scrupulously clean as any operating room I’d ever been in, right down to its chilled ambient temperature, white tiles, and large spotless stainless-steel tables for food preparation. A counter the full length of one wall separated the kitchen from the dining hall. Kitchen staff handed out platters of food, pitchers of “bug juice” – the ubiquitous, flavoured sugar water that was the standard camp beverage – and condiments across the counter. The kitchen workers seemed to be between sixteen and eighteen, around the same age as the counsellors. They lived in trailers at the back of the campgrounds. I wondered how they felt about working and waiting on their city counterparts whose work in comparison looked more like playing and partying.

Coach Carson pointed out the office, a modern, well-equipped log cabin, where he, Wendy, and their staff worked. Just outside
of camp, down the road a short distance, was a cabin where the Carsons lived, and another for the camp doctor and his wife. To end our tour, Coach Carson showed me the Playhouse, which had a surround-sound system and plush seats. With great pride he told me about his son, Eric, who was the camp’s head of drama and would be directing the camp play.

“See, I knew when you saw the camp, you’d go
wow
! So, what do you say?”

What could I say but “wow”?

We had lunch, which we inhaled at a pace that I’d come to know as camp tempo. It was a breakneck gobble of submarines-tomato-soup-Rice-Krispie-squares. Afterward, Coach Carson went up to the podium and welcomed both returning and new campers to Camp Carson, now in its thirty-fourth year. At that first lunch, I was introduced to Dr. Don Kitchen, whom everyone called “Kitch,” and his wife, Marg. Kitch was a general practitioner who took his summer vacation at camp. He called it a working holiday. He’d been the camp doctor for years and knew all the kids. He and Marg had three kids who had grown up at the camp and were now counsellors. Kitch told me that every morning after breakfast, he would hold a clinic. After that, Caitlin, a newly graduated nurse in her early twenties, and I were to be available to the campers and staff at all times. We could consult with him over the phone if we had any questions. He was only a few minutes away and promised to come for emergencies. After lunch, Kitch got up and gave a stern lecture to everyone about the dangers of the sun. His words carried a lot more weight than mine ever had, but probably the scary mention of premature aging and deadly skin cancers made them listen up.

The Medical Centre was a centrally located, cozy wood cabin nestled in a grove of pine trees. There was a large, comfortable waiting room, plus a well-equipped doctor’s office,
two examining rooms, and one room with six beds for girls across from another room with six beds for boys. There was also a small isolation room that had one bed in the case of a patient with an infectious disease. At the back were two small bedrooms, one for me and one for Caitlin, who had worked at the camp the year before when she was still a student nurse. After dinner that first night, Caitlin and I got to work setting up and organizing the supplies and medications. I pointed out to Wendy that some of the meds left over from the previous summer were now past their expiry date.

“Pack them up,” she said, “and we’ll send them off to some Third World country along with any outdated equipment. They’re grateful for whatever they can get.”

Caitlin lowered her voice. “The Tiger Lady is tough. She runs a tight ship with supplies and stuff and freaks out if something goes missing. She’s always worried a parent might sue them for something. But she’s such an old-fashioned nurse when it comes to treating the children. It’s basically,
suck it up
. Like, a kid’s arm could be falling right off and she’ll say, ‘go, have a drink of water,’ or something, and it makes them laugh their heads off and forget about whatever was bothering them.”

I laughed, too.
Once a nurse, always a nurse
.

The days started off with pleasant wake-up music. It was usually a selection from a mainstream repertoire, like the Barenaked Ladies, the Steve Miller Band, or the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Breakfast was at 8:00 a.m., during which Caitlin and I were on pill call duty for campers on meds. When we arrived at the dining hall, they would come at us in a mad rush. Caitlin usually stayed on “crowd control” while I gave out pills from a big picnic basket. I had to laugh as I imagined myself skipping in like Little Red Riding Hood with that straw basket over my arm!

Caitlin and I did our best to get to everyone at breakfast, or else we’d have to go hiking all around camp to track down kids who had missed their pills. If a pill accidentally dropped, the kids were quick to remind me of the five-second rule, the interval in which a dropped pill was still okay to take. (Funny, that was never covered in my pharmacology course!) After receiving their meds, the kids returned to their seats and slouched back down on the benches, beside their cabin mates, comfy in their baggy flannel plaid pants, faces hidden deep inside cozy hoodies, their feet in thick, grey woolly socks shoved into Birkenstocks.

The roar in the dining hall at meals was deafening. Conversation was impossible so I worked at reading lips and deciphering the sign language of “Please pass the Cheerios” or “More bug juice?” The food was delicious and plentiful.

After each meal, there were amusing skits and announcements about things like the swim marathon or tryouts for the camp play. Since that first week of camp fell over both July 1, Canada Day, and July 4, Independence Day in the United States, there were moments of patriotism, too. While the majority of campers were Canadian, there were some Americans. (There were few differences between the kids except the Americans referred to the tuck shop as the “canteen” and they liked to imitate the Canadians use of “eh.”) On July 1, the camp dutifully sang “O Canada.” But a few days later we listened to the much more enthusiastic belting out of “The Star-Spangled Banner” by the handful of Yankee campers and staff, who waved their flag and held their hands over their hearts as they sang. Our much more subdued show of national pride made me wonder if a
lack
of patriotism was one thing Canada
was
known for.

There was a definite hierarchy at this camp and you saw it clearly in the dining hall seating. The camp directors, the doctor, his wife, and their friends sat at a head table, presiding over the crowd, like at a wedding. The unit heads, who were in charge of
the various age groupings, had their own tables, and the various heads of specialties such as pottery, art and crafts (a and c), or sail, sat at other tables. Counsellors sat with their campers, which was necessary so they could keep an eye on their kids and also rise up as a group when called upon, to chant in unison their own cabin’s cheer. Caitlin and I sat wherever we could squeeze in. I was usually at the overflow table of swim staff, and she would angle for a spot at the trippers’ table.

After an embarrassing gaffe when I mistook a camper for a counsellor and another when I mistook a counsellor for a camper, I made a concerted effort to get to know the names of the counsellors and where they sat. Soon, I also knew where each specialty was located. At the table of dance and drama instructors – known as “Divas and Drama Queens” – there were entertaining scenes featuring hysterical laughter or uncontrollable weeping over various comedies or tragedies, inevitably ending with someone getting up and stomping away. They would cry at a moment’s notice and burst into song at another. They were super careful about what they ate and never took seconds. It was known that anyone scrounging for extra desserts could help themselves freely at that table.

The long table near the outside wall, right beside the balcony overlooking Lake Serenity, was where the group of trippers, most of them male, seated themselves. They would be taking the children out on hikes and four-or five-day canoe trips in the wilderness of Algonquin Park. With their scruffy beards and wearing do-rags, tight muscle shirts, and hiking boots that seemed suited to scaling Mount Kilimanjaro, they got up frequently during meals to swagger about like conquering Vikings, stretch their legs, strut along the balcony and hork spitballs over the edge onto the lawn. They were buff and stunning specimens of young male beauty. Ah, the macho glory of the trippers! They had big reputations to maintain and glorious traditions to uphold. In the camp
pantheon, the trippers were at the pinnacle. But their reputations, both on and off duty, were well-earned, or so they claimed.

“We work hard, but when we’re off, we’re off,” Jordan, the head tripper, told me.

“They’re pretty hard-core party animals,” Caitlin said when she saw me gazing at them. “Enjoy the eye candy while it lasts,” Caitlin advised. “They are only at camp in between trips. That’s when they get to lounge around and take up a lot of space being beautiful – which they do so very well, don’t they?”

“Not too hard on the eyes,” I said, trying not to let my admiration of the trippers’ good looks be too obvious.

After lunch on the first full day of camp, Caitlin and I went from cabin to cabin, checking each camper for lice. It was the standard, first-day practice, Caitlin said. We worked steadily all afternoon and managed to get to all eight hundred heads, thanks to assistance from a fastidious counsellor from the Constellation cabin who was known as a champion nit-picker. “My whole family had lice. I know what to look for. They call me Miami, as in Miami Lice.” But as it turned out, I was the one who discovered the only cases – two sisters – and felt oddly triumphant at this weird accomplishment. Camp policy dictated that they would have to be sent home and allowed back only after being treated and deemed “clear.” Treating them at camp would be too time-consuming and tedious (after a few minutes of that work you have a new understanding of the phrase “nit-picking”) and the risk of spread to other campers was great. Kitch explained the sensitive matter to the crushed parents on the phone.