Camp Nurse (34 page)

By evening, the
CITS
started dropping. One boy lay on a cot while his girlfriend stood at the door. They looked like Romeo and Juliet, gazing at each other with desire, but forbidden to touch, or even come close. “I love you,” she whispered.

“Love you too,” he mouthed weakly as I pulled the star-crossed lovers apart.

This outbreak was escalating at an alarming rate. We could barely focus on measures to control it when we were so busy taking care of patients. We didn’t even get to some of them in time and would come upon kids lying limply on their beds or even on the floor, too weak to get up. After the vomiting came diarrhea and extreme fatigue. Their eyes became red and sore from the strain of retching and their mouths were parched. We had to examine each person carefully so as not to miss any of the other things that can also cause nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, things such as appendicitis, a bowel obstruction, or even ordinary heatstroke. I recalled Kitch’s warning that stomach pain that wakes a child in the middle of the night is always serious.

Rudy called an emergency meeting of all staff.

“This is a very aggressive virus,” Louise said.

“Tell me about it,” someone mumbled, going outside for air.

“It’s the bubonic plague,” someone said glumly. “Everyone’s gonna get it.”

“This thing’s gone viral,” Matti said, putting down his guitar. He picked it up again and wiped it all over with antiviral cleanser before putting it away in its case. He was looking unwell himself. Even those who weren’t sick were feeling queasy. They also were caring for sick kids and knew the chances were high they might get the bug, too. All we could do was try to contain it with frequent, thorough handwashing. Isolation at camp was going to be difficult and probably already too late.

“The bad news is that it is highly infectious and if you get it, you’ll feel rotten,” Louise said, “but the good news is that it is short-lived and you’ll all recover.”

“That’s great,” they said sarcastically.

“After two or three days of misery, you’ll get better,” Louise went on to say. “It’s rough – I won’t lie to you – but you’ll all survive. What we’re going to have to do is redouble our efforts to control it, or else it will turn out to be a disastrous summer.”

Many were feeling like it was already. The burden of caring for sick kids and keeping the others well and preoccupied was wearing on them, but they soldiered on.

We beefed up the handwashing blitz. Rudy installed new, portable handwashing facilities and bottles of hand sanitizer were placed on each table in the dining hall. We ordered cases of rehydration fluids to replace lost electrolytes (salts and minerals) and glucose (sugar); gallon jugs of antiviral cleaner; boxes of vinyl gloves, disposable masks and gowns; and ten-pound bags of kitty litter to absorb messes and smells. Alice and I worried about vulnerable campers like Steven whose immobility put him at risk; a girl with Crohn’s disease; a boy with a metabolic disorder; and most especially, Daniel, who had diabetes. And there were others, too.

Everyone was either sick or worried sick. The virus was the main topic of conversation.

“Am I going to get it?” so many children asked me.

“I hope not, but if you do, you’ll get better. Keep washing your hands.”

In the midst of all of this, ordinary wounds still needed bandaging, itchy bug bites needed soothing, and twisted ankles needed icing and taping. In fact, a minor injury that occurred back on the very first evening of camp was still keeping us busy with a time-consuming follow-up. It had been pouring rain and Xiu-Ling had run in ahead of Frankie, screaming that Frankie had
fallen off the porch. Frankie limped in tragically, supported on one side by her dripping wet counsellor and on the other by Xiu-Ling, who’d run back to help her. Xiu-Ling was wearing a crazy hat that had a short pole on top to which was attached an open umbrella, and she kept her head cocked at an extreme angle in order to offer Frankie cover from the rain.

“How did this happen?” I tried to keep a straight face at this comical sight.

“She fell into the bushes and they were thorny,” Xiu-Ling explained.

Alice and I cleaned her up and covered her scrapes. But every evening since then, she came back to us to have the bandages changed. Painstakingly, we removed them as Frankie whimpered. “Oooh, please be careful,” she pleaded. “Ouch, ouch ouch!” We told her it would be easier if we did it quickly rather than prolong the agony but she wouldn’t hear of such a drastic approach. It was the third night of the gastro bug, the place was packed with sick kids, and Alice and I had no patience for the drawn-out procedure. Besides, by then, her scrapes had mostly healed. Meanwhile, we were hopping busy: kids were being carried in, the examining rooms were full, the waiting room was packed, and there was a lineup out onto the porch.

I looked at Frankie’s sad face. “Frankie, can you do it yourself, tonight, please?”

“No, no!” She shook her head. “I need you to do it and it’s Cupcake, remember?”

“I’ll do it, but only if you let me do it fast,
Cupcake
.”

“Me no likey.” She backed off, her eyes large behind her glasses.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t have the time, right now.”
For the Band-Aid ceremony
.

“I’ll do it for you!” offered Xiu-Ling. “Please let me, Cuppy-Cake? You likey?”

I stepped back to watch this play out.
Let Cookie be the bad guy
. I watched Xiu-Ling distract Frankie with another silly joke and then in one smooth motion, ripped off the bandage. “Ta-da!” Xiu-Ling held it in the air, waved it like a flag.

Frankie was stunned, uncertain how to react. Should she cry out because it was supposed to hurt? Be furious at me for allowing Xiu-Ling to do this to her? Be angry at Xiu-Ling for tricking her? Or would Frankie make another decision altogether?

I busied myself, watching them out of the corner of my eye and thinking about these everyday choices: to cope or not; to be strong or to dissolve; to choose hope or despair, rise above it or sink down low. I readied myself to celebrate or console. Finally, Frankie made her decision. She burst out laughing, the surest sign of triumph! “Yay, Frankie!” a roar went up around the waiting room. She grinned at her achievement. Cookie and Cupcake went out arm in arm, laughing hysterically.

Once again, my nursing practice was teaching me how much more we can endure, and achieve, than we think we can.

Later that night, I was working, long after midnight, and Rudy showed up unexpectedly. At first, I thought he was sick, but he looked well. He sidled over to me with a sly look in his eye. “I have the key to the tuck shop,” he whispered in my ear. “What’s your pleasure?”

I gasped. Was he coming on to me? “Oh, no, I don’t think so,” I stammered.

“What’ll it be? What do you crave?”

“I couldn’t … possibly …”

“Your choice: Kit Kat or Twinkie? How ’bout a Crunchie?”

I burst out laughing for having misread his intention. Anyway, I desperately needed chocolate way more than sex!

The outbreak showed no signs of abating. More and more children were getting sick and counsellors, too. Somehow, Alice
and I stayed well and kept going.
Nurses can’t get sick
, or so the legend goes.

Camp had become a strange and uncomfortable place. Everyone kept their distance. No hugging or holding hands, no
CITS
sitting in each other’s laps. Visitor’s Day, which was coming up in two weeks, might have to be cancelled. Camp might even have to be shut down for the rest of the summer. Worst of all was the eerie quiet. The music stopped. Silence fell over camp.

The crisis continued. Kids begged to go home. The mood was bleak.

Louise, Alice, and I were stunned at how fast this thing was racing through camp. Our efforts to contain it seemed to have no effect. There were new cases every day. Rudy was worried.

“They’ve all lost their sparkly eyes,” he said in dismay. “Morale has never been so low.”

When’s it gonna hit me?
counsellors caring for sick kids wondered. Most kept a sense of humour – especially the lipstick namer who came up with “Pretty in Puke Pink” and “Viral Violet” – but understandably, there was also grumbling and rumbles of discontent. “I didn’t sign up for this,” some said. A few packed up and left. “I can’t take the chance of getting sick,” said one. “I’m outta here.” “Me too,” a friend said. “This place is contaminated! It’s teeming with pestilence.”

“Yeah,
right
,” said Seth. He was disgusted with those who jumped ship. “They’ll never be able to show their faces here ever again.”

Rudy got sick and retreated to his cabin with only Ringo for company.

By the morning of Day Four we reported the outbreak to the
public health authorities. They planned to come by later that day to investigate.

We studied the situation. There had to be a logical “chain of transmission,” but if we couldn’t discern the pattern we had no way of knowing if our control measures were effective. I came up with an idea. I ran to the arts and crafts shed and returned with a large sheet of cardboard, markers, and stickers in assorted colours. I drew a box for each cabin and put a red dot on Murray’s cabin.
Murray was the first case
. For Day Two, I put two green dots for his co-counsellors and two more for the boys in his cabin.
That makes sense, they’re in the same cabin
. For Day Three, ten yellow dots.
Those kids sit together in the dining hall. The sick CITs had been working with that cabin
. Today, Day Four, we had thirty-five purple dots and the web was getting more intricate. It was far from over. I only hoped it would end before we exhausted our entire range of colours.

Camp had come to a standstill. Activities were cancelled. The dining hall seemed particularly empty and mealtimes were subdued. Seth, Matti, Layla, and others got on the case. They picked up their guitars and played outside the cabin windows of the sick kids and entertained them with skits, pantomimes, and juggling. They started up a drumming circle, an activity that almost everyone could do, and it got kids with bad cases of cabin-fever outdoors again. In fact, the drumming group became such a hit that long after the kids went to sleep, the counsellors kept the beat going late into the night. They reinstated the dining hall music and not just the religious songs, but their own playlist, too. “Will Santana or Sly and the Family Stone pick up the mood better?” “Does Zeppelin go better with mac and cheese, or Judas Priest?” they asked one another, considering the various pairings with the same attention a doctor gives to choosing the appropriate antibiotic. Once again, the sounds of those classic bands, along with the upbeat tunes of Great Big Sea, OutKast, and
Dispatch, boomed out of the speakers. Those who were able got up and moved to the beat as they cleared the tables after meals. Like a restorative tonic, the music brought them back to life.

Two surprise leaders were Lee and Jasmine, last summer’s “bad girls” who were now
CITS
. They even volunteered for the cleaning squad. “We’re stoked,” they said, “down for whatever.” The squad roved around, mopping up messes, airing out cabins, and stripping beds. They probably didn’t do this kind of thing at home but here they took it on with a cheerful attitude. They squealed with delight when we issued them a walkie, and with that in hand and spray bottles of disinfectant hooked onto their shorts, they patrolled the camp, doing their chores and keeping us in the loop along the way.

“Cleanup in aisle five” or “puke puddle alert,” one would say over the walkie to summon the rest of the crew to bring the bags of kitty litter, brooms, buckets and mops.

“Nurse Tilda? Are you there? Over and out.”

“Yes, Lee. I’m here.”

“Hey, it’s Jasmine. I’m down at the canoe docks with two little Flame girls who are spewing chunks!”

“Okay. Bring them in.”

A few minutes later, I heard, “
FYI
: two other girls from the same cabin aren’t feeling well. I think they’re about to hurl.”

“Bring them in, Jasmine, over and out.”

“This is Lee. I’m all over it! Ten-four, Nurse Tilda!”

They didn’t seem worried about getting sick themselves. They even offered to supervise our isolation ward, which had been dubbed “The Colony.” They played an elaborate fantasy game with the children based on the
TV
show
Lost
, pretending they were survivors of a plane crash, stranded on a deserted island, having to band together to protect themselves from monsters, doomsday warriors, and evil island inhabitants. The male counsellors had their own style of fun, lining up garbage cans for
duelling barf-fests, cracking lots of diarrhea jokes, and devising clever poop descriptions and fart charts.

In the afternoon the health inspector arrived. He strode in, carrying a briefcase like a detective, determined to get to the bottom of the case. First, he inspected the kitchen and found it spotless, quickly ruling out food contamination as a source of the infection. He examined my diagram charting the rapid, exponential spread and interviewed Murray, the first or “index” case, who had by then completely recovered.

“Continue exactly as you’re doing,” he concluded. “Disinfecting all surfaces, frequent handwashing, and minimizing physical contact is the only way to beat it.” But as he got up to leave, he warned us, “If there’s any escalation, you’ll have to close the camp. As for Visitor’s Day in a week and a half, I’d advise you to cancel it.” He must have noticed our shocked faces because he added: “Go ahead if you must, but no touching.”

Visitor’s Day, without hugging or kissing? Unheard of!

Before parting, he offered guarded encouragement. “When the number of new cases starts to level off and you’ve hit a plateau, it’ll be the beginning of the end.”

We notified parents about the outbreak and the possibility of cancelling Visitor’s Day. Some wanted to come and get their kids right away but we advised against it. They’d probably be feeling better in a day or two, and at home they’d be exposing family members, including possibly elderly grandparents or others who couldn’t easily withstand a debilitating illness. Distraught, some mothers and fathers called daily. Anxiety was spreading like the virus itself. From his sick bed, Rudy composed a group e-mail.