When I'm On Duty

(being the long-awaited translation into English of my own German/Berliner original of Aug. 2011 – NB: every part of this is true to the letter and occurred as described, only the very ending is fiction. And in the words of Alfred Hitchcock, I hope you will enjoy it.)

When I'm On Duty it's serious business. I'm a nurse/caregiver, by employment and by calling, and by conviction. I provide care. For ill and disabled. Gladly so. I work in Berlin, mainly mobile care – at the time of this telling, in the Wedding district where I also happened to live, that is, where I was quite familiar with every bend and corner. At the time I was employed by a private outfit which wanted me exclusively for evening, or late-shift. This made little difference to me, as I always drew advantage from either early or late shift, and evenings can prove very interesting, even a bit fun.
My Tour, as we call the route, located me mainly in the area of Nauener Place - not exactly fun, that. On the other hand, also not so bad, could be worse – I could be in the sub-districts of Britz or Lankwitz or Lichtenrade, where nothing's ever going on.

But on foot, yeah that too – they apparently hadn't thought of cars, and they'd provided no bikes either, and I hadn't had one of my own since years. Fine, so I'm from Colorado after all, where we're used to walking, and in winter as well. But the shtick with waiting-for-the-bus on top of all that – was this necessary? Right. But Duty is Duty, I got underway. And in good spirits.

Mobile, home-health-visits means, I carry a big ring full of keys, I look like a prison warden or an apartment manager, am often asked whether I am just that – apartment manager I mean. In this way I have access to any house or any apartment flat, wherever one's either physically and/or psychologically not in any condition to let me in if I rang from the street. As it was winter, I had on a light parka with deep pockets. My key ring fit just right in there. Furthermore I carried a simple folder with Duty-related stuff in it and a cloth shopping bag which sufficed for everything: folder, nurse-related, maybe a pressure cuff and steth or whatever else, my thick Gortex gloves from my military duty period. Duty, Duty, always Duty, obligation and job, service...Duty.

I was never an Army medic, I was in Intelligence, thoroughly hard-trained Top Secret analyst. And what has that to do with nursing? Why, nothing at all. However, caregiving I did practice in the States over decades, and military service was something like a break in the pattern, a change of scenery. What did however fit together was my trained Hard-Assed-Bastard persona, which always served me well in such necks o' th' woods as here, for example, at Nauener Place, in Wedding.

Some acquaintances or co-workers would ask me at the time, how I could trust myself to walk about so alone in such a run-down seedy area among the low-lifes of that environment, self-appointed nabe checkers and mega-checkers, junkies and dealers, boozers and losers, and mainly Turkish or Arab toughs. My answer was always that they're actually the ones who should be trusting themselves to even show their faces – when I'm on Duty. And moreover, damned-focused en route I was, under obligatory – and sometimes biting – time pressure. What's more, it had been my long practiced style – and tried and true at that – to ignore them. That didn't mean to be naively and unrealistically unwatchful, but rather to make my way through the area sovereign and on purpose, concentrated on my Tour course and likewise relaxed and conscious, awake and watchful, even friendly – without wasting the least attention on stone-age troglodytes. Gait and projection make a huge difference. That convinces oneself and everyone in one's surroundings likewise.

Sometimes I project a little Robert DeNiro, sometimes Clint Eastwood, sometimes even Jack Nicholson. Never, but never, Woody Allen. This one I've long since put behind me. But for all that, I'm still just me, and if it comes off as genuine, it suffices – when I'm on Duty. Anyway, there's much worse out there by far, than Nauener Place.

Undisturbed by all the distrustful, sometimes really foul looks – regardless of whether at the doorway to a bar or from under a hijab – or by every fixating provocation or unconscious macho posturing, I effortlessly kept their need for attention or their resentments at arm's length. My free pace and tempo communicated breathing space and said in effect – and in Berliner dialect at that: 'Ey – watch it – here walks a nurse/caregiver on Duty. Registered and mobile at that – so don't go making yourselves so goddam important and don't – even – start with me.

But with heart, with heart and soul. I was approachable, just not distractable. Sometmes en route to a patient or client I had to stop and manage something sudden, to lend shoulder to an iced-in car from a parking spot, or give directions to some address, or even set some fallen pedestrian in the street back on their feet.

When I'm on Duty my patients or clients aren't just a stop-off, they also happen to be under my protection. They'd be provided with care and conversation, medication painstakingly looked after and every need attended to and squared away – emotional as much as physical taken into consideration, wherever realistic and within time constraints. An extra open-sandwich or drink, some talk if needed, be that social/political or about the weather, family relations or trouble with the doctor, everything went according to the everyday course of human affairs and quality of life wherever possible. The keys to their buildings, their apartment flats, were never to be lost or misplaced, much less allowed to land in the hands of strangers. And therein lies the kernel of this episode on this winter evening in the professional life of a nurse/caregiver on Duty. But I'm getting there.

My Tour demanded of me as already said, not only that I go hither and yon on foot, but in addition to that, take the public trnasportation, i.e., to depend on late-coming buses, to Gesundbrunnen and back to Nauener Place, or with the Underground U9 to Moabit and back to Leopold Place, then tramping off back to Gottschedstrasse along Martin-Opitz-Strasse.

 And exactly there is where something happened, while I was on Duty. Late that evening I got the escort of unwanted company en route to a one-legged diabetic (non-)gentleman, who sat up in his bed in the livingroom in front of the TV waiting for my visit. Exactly at this hour, 9 p.m., not too early and not later than he'd wanted. In his dissatisfied mid-70s (disgusted with himself, with his history of alcohol shame, as former Hitler Youth, over his present condition of “life-unworthy-of-life“ according to die-hard indoctrination), he'd remained bitter and was usually in a state of irritation and self-pity, and therewith demanding. And soaked through and through in his diaper and bedding. But what the hell, still one of mine, and under my protective care.

Snow and slush lay on the sidewalk, I walked on the left side along Martin-Opitz, up from Schulstrasse, in the direction of Gottsched. Over there to the left and across was his building. My big ring thick with keys lay untocuhed in my parka pocket. On the right side of the street there walked parallel to me some younger dude, maybe late-20s, early-30s, I didn't ask him. Neither Turk nor Arab, but German – whether of pure German roots I also forgot to ask, I have other things on my mind when I'm on Duty. My instincts are, for all that, also not bad, sometimes very good. ( My head said, in my Berliner dialect-soaked thinking, Aw c'mon, that's just your paranoid imagination working overtime, yet my gut feeling was telling me that I'm about to get a visitor, even an escort, like it or not.) I gave him not the least attention, nothing, nada.

And suddenly he was on to me in spite of this, crossed over and walked – although so much distance between us was possible (and far more likely to expect from a German), he paced himself two meters, one meter, a half meter directly behind me. I remained unconcerned as a matter of practice and experience, calmly resting in my breath and inwardly trusting and cool, despite the growing tension. Then he stepped on my heel with his toe, unmistakeably. (Okay, little buddy, I thought in dialect, that was a provocation, you can friggin' well forget it. You're not scoring any scare-points with me that way either.) I picked up my step a bit, just to cut him loose from his notion of play.

Just so he could still save face, perhaps rethink the matter, if he really wanted to start something with me when I'm on Duty, and whether he should really just risk all that. He appeared pretty determined. Pity that, I was all the moreso.

He followed me to the entrance, my hand remained hidden deep in the right pocket of my parka, protective of my ringful of keys, I freed up the single key at first, never considering so stupidly taking the whole bunch he was already after out, just so he could swipe it from me in one grab and make his way into the building at mine and all others' expense – my waiting patient patiently waiting, and every other occupant in the building, just in the midst of my home-visit. Not to mention, what my boss would say.

And so we both stood still before that door, like a still moment's ceasefire, my posture suggesting my entering but not ours together, my intention being, going in alone quite unthreatened and without the escort. His posture or body language if you will, on the other hand was suggestive toward me, sideways and looming, threatening, his eyes boring in, his grin sneering and provoking. Open it, he merely said.  (He did use the Sie form, which is polite and formal, not du.)

(Oh yeah, sure, okay, I'll do that, mm-hm. Was he just stupid, or suicidal?) I played the far more dangerous a wolf than you! card, one out of my repertoire of movie countenances:  you turn real slowly with that full-of-unsettlingly-quiet-danger signaled in your look, mind clear with intent, even if you're still just strategizing through it all – or perhaps even because you're strategizing – and say, with a very controlled Dirty Harry voice, your line – which in this script ran, in good Berliner style and dialect: I'm a male nurse and caregiver on Duty, y'see, I got business here. So leave it. I held his look, never mind whatever options I saw or didn't. And calling his bluff I met his psychological pushing with a fearless and, of-anything-capable-and-prepared-for-it, force of sovereignty.

Open the door. (Ah, so we're still by Sie, and yet so close to getting all tight and friendly.) D'you live here? I countered, ready to bring it into that du-form, without actually looking for new bromances here. I was in a hurry, but fine, everything in its time. Yeah, he answered, still with this posture and that grin. And again, Open the door. (Sure, well well, still that Sie-form, and here I was wanting to du the bastard, and if he'd just known how close to his end he was coming, he'd have dropped all this bullshit with Sie-form by attempted B&E-w/- intent-toward-bodily-injury in a heartbeat. But fine, so I'm flexible, you have to be that when you're on Duty.)

He just wouldn't quit, went on pressing the issue, I inconspicuously pulled on a pair of latex nursing gloves, skin tight and practical for all eventualities, you could pick up a dime – and drop it where you want it. And just as I was considering whether to call the police on my duty cell phone right now – as if I'd ever get that far, when he relieves me of the phone with one hand and knocks me down with the other – or better to call the cops after I've laid him out cold and gotten rid of him, yep – just in that moment he made his move, then I made mine. He wanted that set of keys, end of nice conversation.

I saw only all those residents in that building, who would shortly go to bed in the security of their apartments, I saw my patient still waiting for my visit and not yet worried about what was keeping me, because I had to act so decisively and unhesitatingly. That's how it sometimes is on Duty. I put a tight grip on that entrance key, now separated from the entire set, sharp-pointed in my balled right fist, between my middle and ring fingers, firm and pointed outward, glinting under the nearby streetlamp as I bored – with lightning speed and medical exactitude – a sort of tracheostoma right through his throat. The entry was clean, and the once-turning, and the pulling-out – his bleeding was not so clean. He stood for a second, his leering glance now gone, and dropped before my feet onto the snow and slush covered ground.

That was about it, was my closing word – still in dialect, and I looked at my watch. Still on schedule, that'll work. I pulled off the gloves, wiped the key, performed my duties upstairs in my usual professional manner, took care of the body outside afterward. That shit doesn't cut it with me, right? I said to the corpse during the removal, not with me, and certainly not when I'm on Duty.

http://samuelinayatchisti.blogspot.de/2011/08/wenn-ich-im-dienst-bin.html