Camp Nurse (19 page)

Less than an hour later, Max was found, sitting in Harry’s cabin, surrounded by a stack of Archie comics, engrossed in
reading and digging into his brother’s stash of candy (his own long ago devoured). He said he’d gone off by himself to test out an idea he’d come up with for “forest hockey” using branches for sticks and pine cones for pucks. Then, he thought he’d poke around in Harry’s cabin. Luckily, he was found before Wendy had a chance to enact the disaster plan, which included dragging the water, fanning the forest in a human chain, and calling the
RCMP
.

We barely had time to relax when, only a few hours later, there was a real emergency.

Coach Carson received a frantic call from the trippers: two boys were missing. It had been a long day of paddling and portages. When they got to the campsite, Jordan had told the kids to go off to gather wood for a fire. Two boys did not come back. They’d been missing now for three hours and night was falling. They had no flashlight, food, or water. Neither was a strong swimmer and, worst of all, a canoe was missing.

A meeting in the office was held. Kitch and I came, too. Coach Carson called the provincial police and park officials. A helicopter with searchlights and heat sensors had already been deployed and would work into the night. Then, Coach Carson had to call the parents of each of the missing boys.

“Everything is being done,” he told them calmly, “we will find them.”

Both sets of parents got into their cars to head up to camp immediately. They couldn’t sit at home, worrying and waiting for word from the camp. “Let us know the minute you hear something,” one father said. The speakerphone was on and I heard the terror in his voice.

“This can’t end well!” Wendy wrung her hands.

She was losing it, but Coach Carson kept his cool. Kitch looked grim. Quietly, he and I discussed the possibilities: disorientation, shock, hypothermia, exposure, bear attack, drowning, or the worst of all, no rescue at all, only the retrieval of remains.

A few hours later, long past midnight, bolstered by cups of black coffee, we were still sitting there when one set of distraught parents burst into the office.

“We were driving so fast, I was afraid the kids would be found, only to be orphans!” one father said, nervously joking.

“I want to reassure you,” Coach Carson said, “our trippers are very experienced and responsible young men. They will find your children.”

A short while later, the other set of parents arrived. The parents were anxious and, understandably, inconsolable. We offered them a cabin, beds, and blankets, but all four went to a hotel in the nearby town to rest.

The light in the Carsons’ bedroom burned all night.

By morning, the boys were still missing.

To avoid hysteria, no one else at camp was told about the crisis. Camp continued as usual. The few of us who knew did our best to contain our worry.

At the same time this crisis was happening, the counsellors were busy with their own secret. For the past few days, they had been staying up later than usual, preparing something big, but no one would tell me what it was. In their free time, groups of them gathered in excited huddles, busy with piles of art supplies. They were painting huge signs, drawing charts and maps, choosing captains and mascots, making costumes, writing songs, and practising special cheers.

“What’s going on?” I asked one counsellor.

“I can’t tell you.”

“As the nurse, I
need
to know.” I didn’t, really, but I was curious.

She shook her head and pretended to lock her lips, throw away the key.

I glared back at her and stood my ground.

“Well, okay, I’ll tell you, but you can’t tell any kids. It’s Colour Wars.”

“What’s that?”

“Get out!” she gasped. “I don’t believe you.”

Now, I have heard it said that many young people these days are unable to name their nation’s capital city or leader and I guess I find that as appalling as this counsellor found my ignorance of her world. However, after recovering from her shock, she explained to me that Colour Wars was a huge deal, the highlight of the summer. The camp would be divided into four teams to play all-day games. If you were on the winning team, well, it totally rocked, she said in summary.

“What’s the prize for the winning team?”

“Candy and a sleep-in!”

“When is this event taking place?”

“I definitely can’t tell you that. It’s top secret.”

This girl had potential as an intelligence operative, but she’d met her match: I was a counter-intelligence agent. I gave her a menacing look.

She caved and threw me a bone. “All you need to know is when the obstacle course race happens. That’s when everyone gets injured.”

Thanks for the heads-up
.

As I walked away, her friend went over. “You didn’t tell her, did you?”

“Yeah, she made me.”

“We’re going to have to kill her now.”

Almost a full two days after the boys had gone missing, the police called with good news. They’d been found! Sunburned, covered in insect bites, scared to death, hungry, thirsty, and in shock, but alive! After a check-up at the local hospital, they’d been discharged. They had suffered no injury from exposure. They said they had gone to gather firewood and decided to take out a
canoe on their own, but on their way back they couldn’t find the campsite.

Coach Carson approached one pair of now-relieved parents. “I want you to know that at no time was your son in any danger whatsoever.”

“Don’t bullshit us, Carson!” the father snapped. “What kind of training do these trippers have? How could they lose our child?”

“I’m sorry, what I mean is that
your
son wasn’t lost. The trippers mixed up the names. It was another boy also named Brandon, not
your
Brandon.”

They were stunned, unsure how to react. They hung between relief and anger. I thought about the parents whose son had been lost, who were still at home, blissfully oblivious to their possible tragedy.

After ensuring their children were all right, both groups of parents left to return home, but not before Coach Carson offered to waive all camp fees for their kids for the following summer to compensate for their emotional distress.

“I’ve lost ten years off my life.” Coach Carson dropped down onto the couch in his office, utterly exhausted.

Wendy sighed. “At least it all ended well,” she said.

Camp had been in swing for three weeks. Tomorrow was Visitor’s Day, and a few days after that, my kids and I would be leaving. My days were pleasant and I was enjoying myself immensely, confidently and competently treating the daily flow of blisters, splinters, sore throats, headaches, and stomach aches.

The counsellors were still busy with their surreptitious late-night activities, but meanwhile, a daytime flurry of hustle and bustle had kicked up around camp, this one in preparation for Visitor’s Day. Extra gardeners were brought in to pick up litter, mow lawns, and clip hedges. Maintenance crews spruced up the
outside of the buildings. Campers and counsellors did a massive clean-up inside their cabins, followed by inspection by the unit heads. The kitchen staff was getting ready for the special lunch for the parents, and as a result breakfast was even more rushed than usual. Amid all of these distractions, Caitlin and I suddenly became aware that the picnic basket of meds, always kept on the bench with one of us, was missing. That basket held amphetamines, antidepressants, sedatives, and antibiotics. Wendy was furious at us and told us what we already knew.

“If a child gets into those meds it could be disastrous! This can’t end well.”

She called a camp-wide roll call and gave a stern warning to whoever had pulled this dangerous prank to come forward immediately. I noticed Hailey was missing. I ran off with a good hunch where she might be.

I had been spending a lot of time with Hailey. Almost every day, she would duck and dive when she saw me, but end up agreeing to take a walk with me. We went on the path I hiked with Caitlin in the mornings. The trail led into the woods and then out onto a quiet country road that ran alongside camp. During those walks, I gave Hailey full rein to express her unhappiness. She was still angry and defiant, more determined than ever to leave on Visitor’s Day when her parents arrived. She even had her bags packed. Yet her parents had signed her up for the entire summer. I wondered who would win.

“If she comes home, she wins,” her mother had explained to me on the phone.

“That girl is not coming home,” her father told me in a separate conversation. “We paid for this camp. She’s staying. End of discussion.”

“I’m at war with my parents,” Hailey said, looking resolute.

I knew I couldn’t fix anything, but I also knew, from so many years of being a nurse, the value in simply listening and being
open to another person’s pain. Hailey had to go through it alone, but if it helped knowing there was a caring and understanding adult, I would be that.

I ran through the woods to the private spot where she and I usually sat. The moment I came upon her in the clearing, I could tell she was glad to be found, even though she scowled when she saw me. The picnic basket with the meds was at her side. I joined her on a slab of granite rock for a few minutes, talked quietly, and then we headed back to camp.

“You’re the reason I’ve made it at camp this long. I hope you’re not leaving,” she said.

“Yes, after Visitor’s Day. I have to get back to my job in the hospital.”

“I’m going home, too. I’ll do what it takes to get out of here. I warned you, I’m relentless.”

After dinner that night, they held the long-standing tradition of the hilarious “Lost and Found Fashion Show,” where counsellors paraded around the dining hall wearing items of unclaimed clothing and sports equipment, calling out the camper’s name on the label. It was amusing to see the counsellors sporting the kids’ clothes and acting silly, but there was also a sense of urgency to the game – Coach Carson and Wendy presided over it from the sidelines – of uniting those clothes and expensive items to the owners before the parents arrived the next day.

“V-Day” dawned bright and sunny. Camp Carson was abuzz with excitement. By mid morning, cars were lined up outside the gate. By noon, they were bumper to bumper in four converging rows, ready for the moment when Coach Carson opened the gate, which he did, precisely at noon. The trippers, now subdued and compliant after the disastrous trip, were very industrious. They had turned the soccer field and baseball diamond into
parking lots and were directing traffic, acting as parking valets, and helping parents meet up with their children.

Caitlin ran over to tell me that a plane had landed and docked at the waterfront and someone’s parents climbed out. “It’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen!”

Everywhere you turned, heartwarming greetings were ringing out across the Land of Camp!

“Mom!”

“Dad!”

Kids ran to their parents – and to step-parents, a slew of siblings and step-siblings, grandparents and step-grandparents. The parents looked refreshed and eager to see their kids. The time apart had been good for everyone, but how strange to see the place suddenly flooded with adults. Grown-ups were invading the kids’ world!

The visitors came laden with provisions: picnic hampers and voluminous hockey bags stuffed with giant-sized bags of potato chips, boxes of party sandwiches, hamburgers (still warm from the local town’s drive-thru), fried chicken, barbequed spare ribs, chocolate cakes, lemon meringue and apple pies, and cartons of lemonade and iced tea, cases of Coke, Styrofoam cups of dried noodle soups, huge slabs of chocolate, and party-sized bags of candy to replenish their tool boxes. They brought teen magazines, clothes, sports equipment, toys, games, and gadgets. Some of the things they brought the kids hadn’t even been missing.

Other noteworthy visitors were the many family dogs, all well-behaved and on leashes. There were even a few purse pooches, their beribboned heads sticking out the top of their owners’ handbags. I saw kids run with outstretched arms right past their parents to embrace their beloved pets. In some cases it was hard to tell if the children were happier to see their parents or their dogs, but in the end all were lavished with lots of affection.

I wondered how Alexa Rose was dealing with this canine onslaught, but Caitlin told me her parents had whisked her and T.C. out of camp for an afternoon of pampering in the local town. “She told me she was going to max out her parents’ credit cards,” Caitlin said. “It was the first time I’ve actually seen her smile.”

Well, I couldn’t hang around ogling and petting the beautiful dogs. I was expected to meet parents and answer any questions they had about their children’s health. As I worked the crowd, I found the parents were as generous to staff as they were to their children. They tipped the counsellors – which was against camp policy but not actually enforced – and spoiled Caitlin and me with boxes of chocolates, bubble bath, gift certificates, even a voucher for a day at a spa.

The kids gave their parents the clay pots, vases, necklaces, and bracelets they’d made, showed them all around camp, and recounted their many achievements.

“I learned how to swallow pills!” said one girl as she saw me walk by. I’d obviously given her some sort of tablet. “The nurse taught me.” I waved at them.

“They make us wake up at the crack of dawn,” one boy said, but he didn’t seem too upset about it. “We walk
outside
to check out the weather, ’cause there’s no weather channel!” He told his parents about his canoe trip. “We didn’t even take an alarm clock. We used the sun to wake us up!”

Another child was also excited about outdoor discoveries.

“Our cabin went stargazing! I saw a shooting star. It was way cool. Then we went out again and we saw the exact same stars in the sky. I thought every night would be different stars.”

“Hey, Dad, listen to this,” a kid yelled as he strummed a guitar. “I wrote a song!”

I noticed one girl who had no visitors, but it didn’t seem to bother her. “At first, I thought my mom was coming and I was jiggy with that, but she nixed the idea when she thought for some
reason that my dad was coming. But she should know he would never come here. His idea of nature is driving his convertible with the top down.” She happily spent the day with a cabin mate and her parents.