Fuck your chart.

How.
Dare.
You.
How dare you come here with your pile of paperwork,
While I'm caring for my many patients
While I'm doing my Work.
God's work, as my father once called it.
How dare you come and ask me to explain myself.
"Where's the chart?"
I didn't tear it apart.
"Where's the chart?"
I gave report, she would have been responsible for it.
"Where's the chart?
Where, you ask, where is the chart?
I don't know what you are looking for,
What piece of paper, but I know that
I gave that woman the finest care.
I made her feel loved, in a moment of deepest sorrow.
I was her shepherd through the world's deepest pain:
The grief of a mother for her young son.
I held her toddler daughter so she could cry openly.
I held this stranger on my shoulder and wept with her
I heard her pride in naming him herself.
I listened carefully for his heartbeat time and time again until,
When it finally stopped and I knew he wouldn't feel any more pain
I gently cast his footprints in plaster,
The only proof she would ever have that he was hers
And hers alone.
The only thing in her world that she might call her own.
And so, no.
I didn't write much down.
I didn't chart vital signs so meager.
I didn't cross my t's or dot my i's.
But I was a damn fine nurse, that day.
So put a fucking price on that.
After all, what is the code for "sorrow"?
For "lonely"?
How much should grief cost?
And, had I spent more time charting
and less time caring...
Would it pay more?
I am no man's whore,
No rule-following automaton
I am a nurse.
A lady with a lamp, lighting a way through the dark and confusing
Web of the human response to disease.
The *human* response.

So fuck you.
Fuck you and your chart.  You're lucky I filled out as much as I did.
No, I can't remember what happened to that piece of paper a month ago.
But I will always remember that baby's name.
And the day that I made a real difference in someone's life and someone's death.

What will you remember?