THE CRACKERS FROM THE VENDING MACHINE

Dear Delyara, I’m an emergency-room nurse, and this morning I ate six peanut-butter crackers in the hospital parking garage because I couldn’t face driving home yet. A nine-year-old boy died during my shift. His mother kept asking whether she could hold him after we stopped trying. She said it so politely that I wanted to scream. She kept saying, “Please, when you’re finished, may I hold my baby?” My supervisor told me I handled everything professionally. I completed the paperwork. I changed my scrubs. I even reminded the new nurse to restock the pediatric cart. Then I bought crackers from the vending machine and sat on the concrete floor beside my car. The packet said 300 calories. I remember thinking how obscene it was that the world could measure the exact amount of energy inside six crackers but had no unit for the weight of watching a mother lift her dead child. I am supposed to sleep now. I don’t know how people sleep after carrying things like this home.