Table Of ContentM
HEALTHCARE
u THE BELL LAP
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Stories for Compassionate Nursing Care
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The Bell Lap explores, with great insight, the multiple lessons of living H
and dying. These stories offer engaging and invaluable insights for trainees,
E
practicing nurses, and other health professionals working in the field.
B
Through these stories, the author has laid the ground for caregivers
to reach beyond the confines of the settings of illness, whether home, E
hospital, or long-term care and become an active and involved participant L
in the world of the patient. L
L
“These are stories about intricate caring. Heartfelt and
A
moving and important.”
—Michael Ondaatje, Author of The English Patient P
“Each story in this collection is unique, a country unto itself,
with characters drawn so clearly and so fully they become not
only known but cared about.”
—Cortney Davis, Registered Nurse and Author of Between the
Heartbeats: Poetry and Prose by Nurses and When the Nurse
Becomes a Patient
Artwork by Alex Hillkurtz
Muriel A. Murch
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The Bell Lap
Stories for Compassionate Nursing Care
•
Muriel A. Murch
Boca Raton London New York
CRC Press is an imprint of the
Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
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© 2016 by Muriel A. Murch
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Version Date: 20160225
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Contents
Acknowledgments v
Advance Praise for The Bell Lap vii
Prologue 1
A Drop of Blood 7
The Brigadier, His Buggy and the Butterfl y 13
Mr. Tims’ Morning 27
It Says Love 33
Morning Coffee 39
The Museum Visit 41
Spring Fever 53
Phone Calls 61
The Waiting Room 71
The Vigil 81
Doctor Patel Comes to Tea 89
The Visitor 99
The Dentist 107
The Letter M 115
Epilogue: A True Story 139
Nursing Notes for The Bell Lap 145
References 151
Index 153
About the Author 155
bell lap
n.
The fi nal lap of a race,
as at a track meet,
signaled by the ringing of a bell
as the leader begins the lap.
Acknowledgments
Throughout our busy nursing lives the writing seed germinates slowly. We
snatch moments of quiet time to pull a pen from our pockets and put it to
a scrap of paper. Eventually a journal may give way to the notebook and
the notebook to produce pages of poetry, memoir or prose, for our muse
shows up in different guises.
It is with the help and encouragement of like- minded nurse- writers
that I have found my place beside them, and I am forever grateful to the
ongoing sisterhood of nurse-w riters and physicians who also walk and
write in this, our landscape.
Most importantly of all have been the duo of nurse- writers Cortney
Davis and Judy Schaefer who edited the writing of nurse-w riters from
throughout the Western world in their two anthologies, Between the
Heartbeats: Poetry and Prose by Nurses (1995) and Intensive Care: More
Poetry and Prose by Nurses (2003). Both anthologies were published by
University of Iowa Press.
From these two anthologies have come numerous chapbooks of poetry,
memoir and novels written by nurses about nursing and midwifery.
Medicine and nursing continue to be a bond that unites us as writers.
A huge thank you to Katrina Hulme-C ross who guided me through the
publishing process at Radcliffe Publishing and then led me into the safe
hands of Naomi Wilkinson when Taylor & Francis took over Radcliffe
Publishing.
The following friends, teachers, and writers have all supported, encour-
aged, and guided this collection of stories. They have corrected and
suggested ways that this story could be told this way, or that. Surely
mistakes both medical and literary will remain, and those I claim with
apologies. Thank you all.
Dorothy Alsup, Melinda Angellini- Hurl, Hal and Barbara Barwood,
(cid:129) v (cid:129)
Acknowledgments
Mo and Joe Blumenthal MD, Aneta Brown, Ellie Coppola, Sayantani
DasGupta MD, Cortney Davis RN, MA, Linda DeLibero, Walter
Donahue, Kate Douglas-H enry, Priscilla Ebersole RN, PhD, FAAN,
Vibeke Gadd, Megan Gould, Pete Horner, Janet MacIntosh, Beatrice
Murch, Walter Murch, Participants of the Sarah Lawrence Medical
Writing groups of 2006, Gail Reitano, Janet Robbins, Judy Schaefer and
Susan Stone.
The following stories were fi rst published with the rights returned
thereafter. I am grateful to these collections and journals.
● Mr. Tims’ Morning was fi rst published in Intensive Care: More Poetry
and Prose by Nurses, University of Iowa Press, 2003.
● The Brigadier, His Buggy and the Butterfl y received a prize from Lumina
Journal, Sarah Lawrence College, 2007.
● Doctor Patel Comes to Tea was fi rst published in Stories of Illness and
Healing: Women Write Their Bodies, Kent University Press, 2007.
● A Drop of Blood was fi rst published by 24/7/365: The International
Journal of Healthcare & Humanities, Volume Three Number Three
Spring 2009 and Volume Five Number Five Summer/Fall 2010.
● Spring Fever was fi rst published by 24/7/365: The International Journal
of Healthcare & Humanities, Volume Six Number Six Fall/Winter 2011.
A word about names . . .
Though this is a work of fi ction I confess that all characters are born from
memory and imagination, jumping into the text and making it their own.
It can just take an action, a glance, a gesture that gives them birth and a
new life.
And for me the truth is that I love the names I know and grew up with.
They are comforting to me. They go into a sort of proverbial hat from
where I pluck them out. But there are three names I have left in place.
In the Prologue, with kind permission from his sister, Graham remains
Graham. Sister Boisher was indeed my Sister Tutor. The ward names in
Mr. Tims’ Morning are the ward names I, and others like me, knew and
loved as student and staff nurses. In the Epilogue there was no way I could
improve on the name Bianca Leonardi.
(cid:129) vi (cid:129)
Advance Praise for
The Bell Lap
Muriel Murch in The Bell Lap has explored, with great insight, the
multiple lessons of living and dying. With the soul of a poet she delves
beyond the surface issues of each caregiving event encountered. She
explores beyond visible and concrete experience. In these contributions
she has laid the ground for caregivers to reach beyond the confi nes of the
settings of illness, whether home, hospital, long term care, or residential
and become an active and involved participant in the world of the other,
recognizing that there is no “other.” From youth through old age we need
wisdom to comprehend this. Reaching beyond the visible to encounter the
feelings of family or signifi cant others, and the infl uence of surroundings.
This background is particularly pertinent for the education and develop-
ment of medical and nursing professionals in this present era of health
and illness care when so much has become mechanical and dehumanized.
My particular favorites among these stories are: Mr. Tims’ Morning, The
Waiting Room, and Doctor Patel Comes to Tea. I believe The Bell Lap will
provide a foundation for compassionate care.
Dr. Priscilla Ebersole PhD, RN, FAAN
Geriatric Nursing Pioneer
Author of Toward Healthy Aging: Human Needs and Nursing Response
Geriatric Nursing: Growth of a Specialty
(cid:2)
I love these stories! And if you love learning about people from fi nely
tuned fi ction, you, too, will love them. And these are stories, true to the
(cid:129) vii (cid:129)
Advance Praise for The Bell Lap
marrow, concise and brief, written by a clinician with obvious expertise in
the machinations of body and mind—and with obvious comfort in bouts
with the spirit. The nuance and descriptive detail of illness and suffering
are clinically sound and emotionally poignant.
Nurse Murch knows that each patient has a narrative, a story, of con-
sequence and mystery. Writer Murch turns these narratives end over end
like so much evidence that lays out the story of the individual human being,
whether patient or professional caregiver. We want to follow the evidence
and the timeline and fi nd who and what is at fault. The wordsmithing takes
us to the vulnerable edge and we see that there was no crime. There never
was, just human beings learning to live and learning to die.
From Mr. Tims’ Morning, as a nurse myself, I especially like the simplic-
ity of the nurse’s words, actions, and plans. In a few words Murch has shown
the artfulness of the nurse. I am grateful for this evidence of humanity.
“‘Do you need anything?’ She asked the question softly, almost vaguely
in a manner that allowed him to be slow in his reply. If he chose pain he
could receive an opiate. If he chose loneliness she might stay.”
In clinical terms nursing and medical students, as well as the general
public, will fi nd a new way of understanding complex clinical conditions.
The Bell Lap will become required reading in healthcare curriculums. In
literary terms the reader will fi nd mystery and wordsmithing not unlike
O. Henry and atmosphere not unlike Hitchcock. Murch’s linguistic clarity
and verbal ballet, in itself, is an achievement of a most artful order.
Judy Schaefer, RN, MA
Member, The Kienle Center, College of Medicine, Penn State
University
Author of Between the Heartbeats: Poetry and Prose by Nurses
Wild Onion Nurse
The Poetry of Nursing
Poetry co-e ditor, Pulse, www.pulsevoices.org
(cid:2)
With a nurse’s careful attention to detail, language and a woman’s heart,
Murch pulls back the curtain surrounding our hairless, naked, blank-f aced
(cid:129) viii (cid:129)
