Two Gardens

On my second visit to the ER in one day, I encountered the grumpy admitting nurse. Everything she did had a rough edge to it, from setting up the heart monitor sensors to demanding that I tell her my history. Even the second nurse, setting up the EKG, seemed more clumsy and hesitant in the charged atmosphere than she had been earlier that day.

After I was all hooked up, the grumpy nurse looked at my heart rate and said “a meer 75…that’s no higher than my regular rate”. I wanted to react, but I was too exhausted.

A short while later, she came in to check on the machine and told me that it was the pauses that I was feeling and that she wasn’t going to order bloodwork until the doctor saw me. “We don’t treat that” she said.

The bright lights, the cold room and the middle of the night added to my agitation. So when the doctor finally arrived more than two hours later, I was beyond relieved to learn that the EKG had picked up PVC’s…a fancy name for skipped hearbeats. I drank hungrily the reassuring calm of the doctor as she told me what it meant and listended carefully to my questions. I felt seen and heard. And hopeful.

The admitting nurse returned to hand me my discharge papers and disconnect the monitors. That was when my beloved said to her “You saw that right away didn’t you? The PVC’s” he added. Suddenly she became animated and said “I’ve been at this for 30 years. I should know a thing or two”, visibly pleased.

I wondered how many times in those years had she been seen and heard.

“You have two gardens, your own garden and that of your beloved. First you have to take care of your own garden and master the art of gardening. In each one of us there are flowers and garbage. The garbage is the anger, fear, discrimination, and jealousy within us. If you water the garbage, you will strengthen the negative seeds. If you water the flowers of compassion, understanding, and love, you will strengthen the positive seeds. What you grow is up to you.”

Thich Nhat Hanh

When we finally exited the room, she jumped up from her station and thanked us for coming to see her…escorted us to the exit with delight.

It was the sweetest exit. Both the good news for me and her transformation. A few kind words and she blossomed.