Crystal's Dream

The icy road leading to the hospital is treacherous and I cannot figure out why I let somebody else drive the train. I should be driving! I am a nurse.

Stepping out of the boxcar into the very small parking lot, I see a lot of thin white snow on the ground. This is desert, I think. Why all the snow?

Then I remember. Oh, this must be Kanab or Moab. I've taken a new job in a different hospital.

Inside the brown dingy lobby, I suddenly discover it is the polygamous community.

I am disturbed. This is my first day at work and I cannot figure out what time I am supposed to be here or even where I am to start! I can feel hot air blowing on me and the lobby is full of mingling people, a lot of them children. A smiling woman turns to me. “Oh, Crystal, we are having an unusual start today because Dean Ard died and it's his media coverage. We must all attend.” As she points to a partially opened door at the other end of the brown dingy lobby, I see bright yellow light shining forth and inside the room are flowers and pictures on a mantel above an alcove .

I enter the room at the same time as two little well-behaved kids, polygamous kids with their arms neatly folded, who immediately sit on padded folding chairs which are not at the oval table beautified with purple cloth and purple napkin rings and lavender napkins.

Where am I supposed to sit, I think. Who sits at the table? Feeling unsure and a bit confused, I go over to the piano/casket to look at the pictures of Dean Ard. I have heard his name before but am clueless who he is. I recognize him from his picture and wonder why they are honoring a city official from another town. I notice he is old. Sixty at least.

I turn and see Polly, another RN, is sitting on a couch. Ok. That's where I should sit. Polly says, “You know Rosemary”. And I see the polygamous nurse Rosemary I worked with several years ago.

“Do you remember me?” I ask. “Oh, yes!” Rosemary says with a grin. “We all remember YOU.”

I wonder if that is good or bad but since she is smiling I decide to pretend it is good.

I sit down on the couch beside the other two RN's and suddenly I remember I am a surgery nurse and need to go to Surgery! I leave the polygamists to have their funeral festivities and suddenly I am at the tiny Cocoa Cafe right beside the swinging doors to the Operating Room. I need to enter the O.R and since the O.R. is sterile I must “gown in” to enter and I hate gowning in. I decide to have a cup of hot cocoa but the little crowded cafe is busy with a crisis. A sleeping male patient on a gurney is there and awaiting surgery but nobody can figure out who he is. The confused all-male hospital team is trying to get his identity figured out. I am worried about that sleeping patient but since I have no clue who he is, the problem is not mine to solve.

“Get him out into the hallway!” I order the team. Nobody looks at me or responds