Camp Nurse (3 page)

The next thing I knew it was morning. The sun was blazing and music blared from scratchy speakers that had been placed in the trees. I stood on the porch of the infirmary to get a daytime overview of the camp from my vantage point on top of the hill. I’d been wrong: in the clear morning light of day, the place looked worse, much worse. It was a dump. The cabins were ramshackle and the mess hall, with its caved-in roof and crumbling porch, looked like a condemned building. There was garbage and empty beer bottles littered all over the ground from the party the night before. The campers’ wood cabins were rundown, dilapidated shacks spread out helter-skelter in a valley. The “Nature Shack” was wind-blown, and the arts-and-crafts tent appeared to be sinking into the mud. Down, down the entire camp slumped to the one jewel of the place: the waterfront. With Camp Na-Gee-La situated on beautiful Lost Loon Lake with its sandy beach and protected cove, it made me wonder why Zack and Mike had been swimming in a pond in the backwoods.

On the porch outside the mess hall, a counsellor was strumming “Stairway to Heaven” and singing soulfully. It was way too early in the day for that intense song, but preferable, I supposed, to last night’s head-banging lullabies. Other counsellors were on the grass, tossing Frisbees, and unbelievably, a few counsellors were stretched out on the lawn, covered in baby oil, “catching some early morning rays,” they told me. I made a note to self to talk with them later about sun safety practices. Meanwhile, Harry and Max were amusing themselves while we all waited for breakfast.

Mike came over. “Hey, Nurse Tilda. Rough night? You look wrecked. Not a good look for you – no offence! That was your last chance to rest. The kids arrive this afternoon, so you’d better pace yourself. Did you manage to get any sleep?”

I shook my head.

“Ahh, that sucks.”

“Is there coffee?” I asked.

Mike led me to the kitchen for a cup of hot tap water poured over instant decaffeinated crystals. He introduced me to the cook, a man who was a bit older than the others, which put him in his mid-twenties. He had a scruffy beard and spiky, geometric tattoos depicting daggers and jagged wires along his arms. “You must be the nurse dude,” he said. “My name is Gord, but everyone calls me Sarge.”

I looked around Sarge’s kitchen. A young woman in a do-rag, wearing an inside-out T-shirt and tattered jeans, stood at the stove, breaking eggs into an industrial-sized frying pan with one hand and flipping pancakes with the other. Two gas burners were blazing with nothing on them. On the counter in the direct sunlight was an open bottle of mayonnaise. On the floor in front of the stove, glistening in the rays of sun, was a puddle of melted butter. Beside the puddle were two huge vats, one filled to the brim with peanut butter and the other with strawberry jam, over which bees were noisily buzzing. This place was a death trap if anyone had any life-threatening allergies. I would have to talk with Sarge about the hazards in his kitchen. Maybe I could also tactfully drop hints about hygiene, especially hand washing, for food handlers.

“Hey, I bet you’re the nurse! Wassup?” A tall, lanky guy came over and brushed the hair out of his eyes to get a look at me. He pointed at himself. “The name’s Jake but everyone calls me Wheels.” He told me he was the camp driver. “I run the kids into town to the hospital and pick up supplies. I know everything
about camp, so whatever you need, call on me – no explanation necessary.” He hiked up his baggy pants that were slipping off his hips.

I suddenly realized how they all knew I was the nurse. I was, by far, the oldest person at Camp Na-Gee-La. My only competition for this dubious title was Anderson, a middle-aged maintenance man I’d been hearing about, who would visit the camp from time to time to do repairs. After breakfast, I left the mess hall and noticed Sarge sitting on the stoop out the back of the kitchen, surrounded by overflowing garbage cans, smoking a cigarette. I waved at him. “Hey Sarge, thanks for breakfast.” He grunted in response. “What’s for lunch?” I asked.

“Don’t talk to me when I’m in my Zen garden,” he snapped, but then added, less rudely, “Don’t worry, it’ll be something edible.”

As I made my way back to the infirmary, I happened to meet Anderson. I found him leaning against a tree, just outside the mess hall, observing something with the focused gaze of a scientist.

“I’ve been standing here for twenty minutes,” he said. “See that?” He pointed to a bottle of ketchup lying directly in the path of counsellors filing out of the dining hall after breakfast. They were stepping around or over it. “They won’t pick it up. No one gives a rat’s ass about this shit hole.” He shook his head in disgust. “Nothing worse than rich socialists.”

Suddenly, I heard laughter and the pounding of running feet. “They’re here! The kids are here!” The sun worshippers, Frisbee-tossers, and soulful guitar-player whooped, and raced to the flagpole, the central spot in camp, where the buses were arriving and unloading the campers. As they tumbled out, each child was greeted and hugged by a counsellor. Most of them looked happy to be there, but I quickly spotted two little ones, a girl about ten and her younger brother, who seemed bewildered. In no time, the little boy found his counsellor from last
year and ran to him. The counsellor picked him up, threw him in the air, caught him and spun him around and around. His sister looked on the verge of tears, but then she too was found by her counsellor and gently coaxed away to her cabin. Max eagerly went off to the youngest cabin, the “Friends,” and Harry went off with the “Fellows.” The next group, the thirteen-and fourteen-year-olds, were the “Comrades,” and the oldest campers, the fifteen-and sixteen-year-olds, who stood off in a group by themselves, were “Counsellors in Training,” or
CITS
.

I returned to the infirmary to wait for “business” to arrive.

They came. Children lined up to hand in their meds, and in no time I was inundated with plastic baggies filled with pills, capsules, and tablets; meds in film canisters, old cosmetic bags, and Tupperware containers. Someone handed me a mysterious herbal mixture that came in an empty jewellery box. I received a box full of tiny bottles of homeopathic remedies, some to be given in the event of “feelings of unease” and others for “disorientation.” In a bottle decorated with Strawberry Shortcake and Winnie-the-Pooh stickers were tablets that looked like Advil but labelled amoxicillin, an antibiotic. One child handed me a large business envelope containing black-and-white capsules and red-and-white tablets, all mixed together. In an empty m&m’s box, I found ten tablets of what appeared to be Tylenol with thirty milligrams of codeine, a heavy-duty narcotic. “They’re my
T
3s,” the young child told me, not too pleased to have to turn them in to me.

Mike popped by to say “hey” and inform me that the first day of camp was known as Safe Day. “Everyone can hand over any contraband to you,” he explained. “You know, like booze, smokes, or drugs.”

The whole scene was unnerving: I, who was used to the precise and controlled hospital environment where I had administered
drugs in micrograms or titrated medications in milligrams or millilitres, was now expected to dispense unknown tablets by the handful?

I read through the explanatory notes some parents sent:

In the hospital, I couldn’t give an Aspirin without a doctor’s order, but suddenly, here at camp, it seemed like anything went.

Kids kept coming. After lunch, they continued to line up on the infirmary steps and then spilled onto the grass outside, waiting to hand in their meds or discuss something with me.

“Hi, are you the nurse?” A pretty little girl pushed to the front of the line. She was barefoot, in a bathing suit, her long hair wet from a dip in the lake. “Hi, I’m Micaela and I’m going to be a doctor, an interventional neuroradiologist. My mother is a microbiologist and she put me on a drug holiday for camp. I normally take a cocktail of meds, but she thought I should have a break. Hey, what’s that?” She sniffed the air. “It smells like our kitchen after my mom mops the floor.”

“It’s the trees. Your mom must use pine-scented cleaner.”

Micaela handed me a note from her mom, entitled “Presenting … Micaela Brown.” It explained that Micaela had a “touch” of attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity but was a “free spirit who needs to be allowed to do her own thing.”

“I’ve never actually been
fond
of camp,” Micaela said, “but my
hypothesis
was I would like this one because it’s unique.” She glanced at me to see if I was keeping up with her. “I know, I know, I use lots of
polysyllabic
words. Everyone tells me that. I’ve been tested, and verbally, I’m right off the charts! I’m in the ninety-ninth percentile for my age, which is twelve, going on twenty, as my mom always says.”

“Have you ever been to camp before?” I said to try to interrupt the torrent of words.

“Oh, I’ve been going to camp, like,
forever
. Well, for the past three years, but not this camp. Now, I
live
for camp. At first, I didn’t want to come, but then my mother found this place. She decided I should take a break from my meds, because it’s not like school where I
need
them. My mother says nature has a calming effect, but I don’t like nature. Well, I don’t mind nature, per se, just the bugs.”

“Where’s your counsellor?” I looked around for someone to take her away, eyeing the line of kids stretching on into the afternoon.

“She knows I’m here. I love to visit the nurse. Hey, do you have ibuprofen? I get bad headaches and my head explodes. I get an aura with
scintillating scotoma
, you know, that wiggly, jiggly flashiness?” She drew a wavy picture in the air with her hands.

She was wearing me out. “Micaela, I have to see the other kids.”

“I’m sorry! Sometimes I give
too much information
. Am I
TMI
comin’ at ya? I know I talk a lot, but what can I do? My mom says I’m a turbo-talker.”

For someone with attention deficit, it seemed she had an amazing ability to focus – at least, on things that interested her.

That first evening there was a singsong for all the campers around a roaring bonfire. Zack, or Moon Doggie as he was called at
camp (and who hadn’t, by the way, come to the infirmary to get his wound cleaned, as I had instructed), played the guitar while the kids sang “We Shall Overcome,” “Give Peace a Chance,” “My Song Is My Weapon” and other protest songs about the evils of materialism, the triumph of the working class, and the fight for freedom.

“That’s what bugs me about Beethoven and those other old-school guys,” I heard one kid say to his friend. “No lyrics.” Then he caught sight of me and gave me a pitying look. “Your era must have been so boring,” he said. “No cellphones, videos, or computers. What did you do all day long?”

I stifled a laugh. “It was rough, but we managed.”

While the kids roasted marshmallows, Mike gave a rousing speech.

“Camp Na-Gee-La is a special place,” he said. “Here we learn about sharing and caring for each other, for our community, and for Mother Earth. We are striving toward a society of equality and justice for all. For example, take candy. Any candy you have must be shared equally. Don’t forget, because next week we have a trip to the jellybean factory.

“We are youth leading youth!” he called out and a great cheering roar rose up.

“We have a dream of a better world!”

“Yay! Yay!” The crowd clapped and whistled.

“Justice and freedom for all oppressed people!”

When the roar died down, Mike said, “Tomorrow you will be assigned your chores, and I expect everyone to work to the best of their ability, whether it’s kitchen duty or cleaning the toilets.”

“Ewww … pee-yoo!” they groaned.

“Remember, ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’!
Hers
, too.” He grinned.

After hugs all around, the younger campers headed to bed while the teenagers got busy with high-energy games of skateboard
b-ball and gladiator dodge ball. Watching them, I remembered being their age and that feeling of boundless energy. It was fun seeing kids engaged in sports that didn’t involve a coach, uniforms, schedules, and a drive to and from the event, not to mention trophies handed out for just showing up. Meanwhile, the oldest group, the
CITS
, went off to their evening program, which involved all of them, boys and girls together, going into the forest that surrounded the camp and staying there for over an hour. Mike called it a social mixer, a way to break the ice so that everyone would get to know each other fast. “When you’re in the dark and can’t see your way, you have to lean on each other. It builds trust,” he explained. These goings-on weren’t building any trust in me. They could be having an orgy in there for all I knew. I can’t say for sure what did go on out there in the woods, but when they finally emerged, rumpled and dazed, they looked pretty pleased with themselves.

While all of this activity was taking place, counsellors who had the night off snuck away and headed for a “romp in the swamp,” which included, rumour had it, skinny-dipping. Later, after it seemed that almost everyone else had gone off to get some sleep and I headed to my cabin and bed, walking past the tripping shed where they kept the paddles, canoes, and kayaks, I heard soft moans coming from inside. Two pairs of flip-flops were lying haphazardly just outside the door. I had to smile.

By the second day I felt as if I’d been there a week. I took a stroll around the grounds. In no time, I was in a scene from a “What’s Wrong With This Picture?” puzzle. Wherever I looked, I saw a potential hazard, something about to break down or an accident waiting to happen. There was broken glass on the ground left from the counsellors’ party. At the waterfront, I found rusty nails protruding from the dock and no sign
of a lifeguard anywhere. Later that day, I cornered Mike.