The Out Patient Department in our hospital is where Dolores had worked for many years. She trained as a Registered Nurse at Payzant Memorial Hospital in Windsor, NS, a school of Nursing that is now closed. A new Hants Community Hospital has been built, and Dolores had worked at the Payzant Memorial and was working at the new Hants Community Hospital when we met. She had grown up in Hants County, NS, married her highschool sweetheart, and raised two children while practicing her career. And, no doubt about it, Dolores is a dynamo.
She is short of stature but big in heart. Dolores has sarcasm honed to a work of art and at times she is unbelievably funny. We became good friends, thought a lot like each other, and our husbands knew each other. Therefore it just became a friendship of four people, a friendship strong and long lasting to this day.
Dolores and her husband Frank had a cottage on a lake. It was a cottage that everyone liked to visit so consequently we had countless parties, games, conversations, and special meals and events at this special little cottage. It was at this small cottage on Lake Mockingee that most of the children learned to water-ski as Frank had the patience to drive the boat all afternoon for them. The fathers took turns being spotters and ensuring the children were safe as they learned the technique of water skiing. It was a rite of passage on Mockingee Lake that every child experienced at some point and will forever remember.
We enjoyed trips to Tancook Island in Mahone Bay, taking the ferry in the morning and returning at night. We shared countless shopping trips, and outings to various places, and also we shared our joys and sorrows. I well remember the morning that Dolores worked through the tears, knowing that her father was dying upstairs on our Medical Unit. It must have been horrible for her, but she did it. There was nobody to replace her it was said. So she put up her shield and got through the day.
It was Dolores and Frank we would call in times of trouble, and they would be there as soon as possible, wherever they were required to be, they would be there. For years Frank and I did a Mr.& Mrs. Santa at Christmas time. Dolores and I would get together at one of our homes and bake dozens and dozens of shortbread cookies. It was just understood that we would do it, and we did. Mrs. Santa had to have cookies! My kids would love to watch and gobble up any cookie or cookie bits that we cast aside.
We always had a project to work on, or plans to make for a trip and that’s the way our weeks and months passed. The ever present ‘beeper’ for our Operating Room call was a part of our lives when we found ourselves working side by side in the Operating Room. It went with the job, and we accepted it, fitting good events in on our days off. Our stretches of call were long, far too long, doing seven straight days and nights tied to the hospital would take it’s toll on our families and certainly on us nurses. We all found it far too long.
There were two RNs’ on call-back for emergencies at all times, and getting called back to work was part of the job. Dropping everything and heading to the hospital in all kinds of weather, and in all seasons, became a way of life. That way of life became very draining after awhile. One night in particular we were called back and spent from midnight to six o’clock in the morning in surgery. At that point there was no sense in going home as our workday started at seven o’clock in the morning.
We went out back to the little lawn area of the hospital and sat at the picnic table and watched the sunrise. A beautiful, still morning with a hint of how lovely the day would become was balm to the soul after the harrowing night we had experienced.
Out of nowhere trotted two handsome ring-necked pheasants. We sat together and silently observed them and lost ourselves in thought. Nothing needed to be said, we just sat quietly together and the sight of those beautiful creatures somehow gave us a second wind and the ability to face the day ahead.
Yes, we are friends, having had a long and very established relationship which continues even though I now live back home in Newfoundland. She has been here for a short visit, and I hope the next visit is longer. I have so much I want to show her, so many things to share with her. I certainly owe her a ‘guide’ experience because she is the person that called to tell me the Lady Slipper flowers were blooming and then crawled around in the brush and black flies until I got the correct camera exposure and the photo I wanted. Only Dolores would do that, so I really do owe her for many such kindnesses.
One New Year’s Eve we were ‘on call’ together. That did not bother us, as it is a celebration is not one either of us especially enjoyed for some odd reason. So we bought a little bottle of champagne, and sat together with our husbands watching the flames dance in the fireplace of her home as the New Year arrived.
And that was, to this day, the best New Years’ Eve I ever had!
That is called enjoying a true and strong friendship. I hope it never changes.
