Free The Making of a Nurse by Tilda Shalof

pail. “Here,” she said. “Do
sponja.”
    I lasted two weeks, hating every minute of it. Every morning I did the
sponja
. It involved filling a bucket with warm soapy water, dumping it out all over the floor, and then sweeping the water outside into the cow pasture behind the hut. Afterwards, I folded laundry and gave out lunch trays to the patients. The other nurses under Yaffa’s regime tiptoed around her. She scolded them if they so much as made a sound during the doctors’ rounds. It was demoralizing. This wasn’t nursing! Luckily, Shoshana Zamir came for a visit and saw how miserable I was. I guess she didn’t want to lose me, as she offered me a position in a new unit to be added onto the back of Barrack Thirty-six, to be called Thirty-six Alef, which tacked on the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet.
    “It will be a bone marrow transplant unit. You will start working in the hematology clinic and when the transplant unit is opened, you’ll work there. They’ve pioneered this procedure in Seattle, San Francisco, and Jerusalem, and now we’ll be on the map, too. How does that sound?” Hematology was blood diseases and that meant mostly cancers, like leukemia and lymphoma. It was an honour to be chosen for the challenge; Shoshana must have seen potential in me.
    After I’d been in Israel a few weeks, I called home. My mother was the same: angry, confused, and inaudible. Pearl seemed to be managing just fine. Once again, I thanked her for making it possible for me to have my freedom. I had even made progress toward my other goal – to let loose and have fun. I had begun to make friends with the other nurses and doctors. On days off they took me to interesting places, like caves with stalagmites and stalactites, a Tel Aviv discotheque, a place on the West Bank called “Little Switzerland” because of its lush valleys and hills, and of course “up” to Jerusalem, the city holy to so many. The language actuallydictated that one “ascended to Jerusalem,” and I understood that the grammar referred not only to the elevation above sea level, but to the spiritual high possible there.
    Even with the tensions and ever-present threat of war, it was easy to find fun in Israel. Sometimes, even my bus ride home after work provided unexpected delights. One night after finishing a shift well after midnight, the driver serenaded the passengers with folk songs as he detoured off the main road to take me right to my apartment door to ensure I got home safely. On another chilly and rainy night, I sat at the back of the bus. “Do you want to get warm?” a handsome soldier asked and opened his jacket for me to snuggle up close. We stayed on long past our stops, quietly making out in the shadows.
    It didn’t take long before I was conversing in basic Hebrew. I had never learned it as a colloquial language, only as it was written in prayer books. The modern vernacular was vibrant, colourful, and at times, unavoidably blunt. It simply did not allow one to sit on the fence, beat around the bush, or act false. In Hebrew, I spoke louder and more boldly and found myself saying things I would never have dared say in English. Perhaps it was also because in Israel, I had a fresh start. People only knew me as I was then, in front of them, during that blossoming time of my life. And when I spoke to men in Hebrew, I felt beautiful and alive. It was as if sexual innuendo was built right into the grammar. The different forms of address identified the speaker and the one spoken to as male or female. It was a turn-on when a man recognized my femininity by the suffixes he used. When I spoke, I identified myself as a woman and him as a man. I’m not sure this titillating
frisson
was what ancient biblical linguists intended, but that was how I experienced it.
    The hematology outpatient clinic was a casual, informal place, despite the seriousness of the patients’ illnesses. The doctors and nurses all wore loose green scrubs and sandals,