The upside to spending time a German hospital is German nurses. Efficient without being harried, perfunctory without haste, kind without superfluous sentiment, German nurses are maternal and caring and best of all they are funny. It's survival humor; make the best of a situation you'd rather avoid humor; looking at the bright side without cracking a smile. Humor comes straight-faced in German, so if you miss what they've said, it's easy to get the wrong idea. You'll think you’ve been given strict instructions when in fact the cute 25 year old nurse with a red streak in her brown ponytail has said, "Now you get to put on this gown and these compression stockings. They look stylish together, don't you think?" Even if the words themselves make sense, German can still sound like a reprimand. "You have to understand," I was recently told by a friend who comes from the south of Germany. "When I say 'Oh, you pig,' it's a good thing! I’m not being mean - that’s our sense of humor. It's a mixture of envy, spite and wonderment."
The hospital lies in the former East Germany, and that’s palpable, even to us Americans. The streetcars are a dismal green and creaky, filled with old men with canes, punks, and women with spiky hair. The same grocery store chain as the one by our house here in Kassel (former West Germany) is stocked just differently enough to make you look twice. Pickles in barrels, twenty kinds of TV guide magazines, and no comb when I look, just unfamiliar brands of soap. The Wall came down twenty years ago this month and because it hasn't been all that long, reunification and the history of division are still part of the collective memory of East Germans, particularly those my age and older.
I was wheeled into the surgery by two chattering nurses. Through my drugged haze I made out snippets of conversation. One was four months pregnant and was having trouble sleeping because of her swollen breasts. “She's pregnant,” the first one said to me. “Just pregnant in my chest,” said the second one, patting her white shirt gingerly. They rolled me down hallways and into elevators, and I kept my eyes closed as we waited outside the surgery wing while someone turned on lights. The non-pregnant nurse was about 40 and wore a little nurse dress, bare legs, and blonde hair pulled back in a clip. She flipped through my chart idly. “Ach so! Frau Schmalz, you came all the way from Kassel to us here in the East?” “Mmm hmmm,” I mumbled from under the duvet cover. “Because of Dr. C and Dr. K.”
She thought that was really nice, pushing me through the swinging doors into another hallway. Everyone who passed had scrubs on and green caps covering their hair. A second wheeled bed appeared beside mine. It was time to get into the other bed. How, I wanted to know. “Just scoot your little self over there, mein West Paket!” the nurse in the dress said. I was stalling, filled with dread - if I got into the other bed that would mean it was all really about to happen - but when she said that, I had to smile. “Do you know what the expression means?” she asked when I looked at her. I shook my head. “Well, back when the Wall was still up, we were always so happy when we had a relative over in the West who would send us packages. Good stuff - coffee, sweets, treats - a package from the west. That's you! You're our little package from the west!”
A few days later, my own little special delivery came from the East: Maddy in from Berlin. And the little package from the west spent the rest of the week being cared for by these two....
And the rest of you - you know who you are - from east and west, north and south. I felt it in 360 degrees.
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