Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: HANDIWORK (01/14/21)
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TITLE: Madagascar Mercy | Previous Challenge Entry
By Corinne Smelker
01/20/21 -
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She moved over to the stainless steel sink and proceeded to scrub her hands and arms, lulled by the monotony of the task and weirdly comforted by it too – this at least was familiar to her, even if nothing else was.
As she finished scrubbing, Jake, the senior OR nurse helped her gown up. “Ready?” he asked, with a twinkle in his eye.
“As I’ll ever be. I know I’ve performed this surgery many times, but it just seems different here, ya know?”
“I know,” he reassured her. “I remember my first surgery. I thought I would faint, or throw up, or both! There’s just something different about being here, amiright?”
Lauren nodded, thankful that Jake understood the churning in her stomach. She reminded herself to thank Jake and the other staff for being so welcoming and helpful to her.
Lauren looked down at her patient – a small girl, no more than three or four years old, artificially asleep thanks to anesthesia. Her dark skin was paler than Lauren remembered, and she looked so fragile and delicate on the surgical table.
“Ok,” Lauren took a deep breath, looked at the clock, “First incision at 8am…”
By the end of her first day, Lauren was exhausted but knew she had to check on her patients before collapsing in her own cabin. She wended her way through beds filled with little ones and their parents until she found her patient, Océane. She was lying in bed, talking softly to her mother.
“Bonjour,” Lauren greeted the mother, Nadia.
“Bonjour,” Nadia’s deep brown eyes welled up with tears and she broke forth in a torrent of French, most of which escaped Lauren’s rudimentary skills, but the intent was clear – ‘my child was broken, you fixed her. Thank you, thank you, thank you.’
Lauren gestured to one of the interpreters so she could talk more easily to Nadia and to Océane. “The surgery went well, as I am sure you can see. There is some swelling but that is to be expected. I placed internal and external stitches and I know they will tickle, but don’t play too much with them, ok?” she said as she smiled down at Océane, and gently stroked her cheek.
Océane looked up at Lauren, her large brown eyes a mirror image of her mother’s. Then they widened as she saw Lauren’s upper lip. Barely visible, and stretching from her upper lip to her nose, was a faint white scar, the only hint that Lauren once was under a surgeon’s knife.
“Oui,” Lauren answered Océane’s unspoken question. “I too had a cleft palate and a surgeon performed his magic and changed my life forever. I want to do the same. I hope to help anyone who needs fixing…”
As she walked away, Lauren looked back at Océane, delighted with the results of her handiwork on the Africa Mercy, docked at Madagascar.
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Mercy Ships travel throughout the world, giving hope to thousands of families each year with life-changing surgeries. In May 2019 they fixed their 100,000th cleft palate in Guinea, Africa. Since its inception Mercy Ships has treated more than 2.7 million patients.
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The only thing I would change is placing a blank line between each speaker's speech to make it easier to see who is speaking.
Well done :)