What Useless Feels Like
I was a pediatric nurse at Providence Medical Center, and I worked long hours. Night shifts, double shifts, weekends. Children did not schedule their emergencies around anyone’s convenience, but my mother made it sound like a character flaw rather than a career.
We were at the Riverside Beastro on a Sunday in Portland, the kind of morning where the waterfront light made everything look warmer than it was.
My mother and father were on their third round of mimosas. My brother Jeffrey was on his phone.
“Barbara, you look tired,” my mother said, in the voice she used when concern was the wrapper for something else entirely. “The schedule has been intense,” I said.
“We had a difficult case this week.
A seven-year-old with acute appendicitis, came in at midnight.”
“How noble,” Jeffrey said, without looking up from his screen. Then: “I just closed the Henderson account. Three point two million in revenue for the firm.”
My father lit up the way he always did.
“That’s my boy.
Partners before forty, I guarantee it.”
Jeffrey worked in commercial real estate. He wore suits that cost more than my monthly rent and drove a car that could have paid off my nursing school loans twice.
Our parents had funded his MBA, his first apartment, his investment portfolio. They called it supporting ambition.
When I had asked for help with my nursing certification fees six years ago, they told me to budget better.
“Three point two million,” my mother said, squeezing Jeffrey’s hand. “We are so proud.”
“Congratulations,” I said. Jeffrey glanced up then, his smile sharp in the way it always was when he had an audience.
“How much do nurses make these days?
Fifty thousand? Sixty?
It just seems like a lot of work for…”
He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to.
The rest of the sentence sat at the table with us anyway.
The waiter brought our food. I focused on my omelet while my family discussed Jeffrey’s next prospects, each one more lucrative than the last, my parents leaning toward him like flowers toward whatever light source was brightest. “Oh, before I forget,” my mother said.
“Your father and I have decided on Hawaii for December.
Two weeks on Maui. Jeffrey and his girlfriend will join us.”
“I’ve never been to Hawaii,” I said quietly.
My mother waved her hand like the thought was mildly inconvenient. “You’re welcome to come if you can get the time off.
The story doesn’t end here – it continues on the next page.
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