In the Eye of a Tree

By Ella Zupcsek-Rhine

One day, I woke up and out of my harrowing sorrow dislocated from a series of ill-fated life
events, and, straightaway, I was peculiarly capable of perceiving the great significance and
profound seriousness of other people's misfortune. That very moment became the start of one benevolence and one empathy for thy neighbour and thy stranger happening to cross close by
my life stream. At the conjunction of reality, parallel universe and imaginary, dreamlike land
"In the eye of a tree" was born, secluded by true feelings and mother nature's nonpareil
beauty. The source of everyday success and day-by-day contentment, sometimes, resides
inside the consideration we give, not to lamentable selfpitiness, but to the aches and pains of
the people entering our gravitational space, no matter if for just a day or a life length.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 3, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503574441

Ella Zupcsek-Rhine

Ella was born and educated in Romania where she achieved her nursing degree before relocating to the United States. Ella has been a nurse for thirty years and still comes to work singing. She believes she “woke up late in life.” With life being short and well worth living, she pours herself wholeheartedly into all she does, including being a mother to her three sons and connecting with the community she lives in. Ella greets each day with energy and compassion and is loved for the positive experiences she creates for her patients and for the wisdom and joy she brings to those around her.

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Copyright © 2015 by Ella Zupcsek-Rhine.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 06/02/2015

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Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

To all people touched by the life and the death of KDM

Chapter One

The nurse studied the tired face looking back at her from the mirror. Wrinkles multiply faster than the bunnies, and no elixir in the world will restore your primary and dominant beauty, no matter how expensive it is or how often you are bathing in it, she thought, and sadness invaded her eyes. She finished washing her hands, insisting beneath the short-trimmed nails, and grabbed the paper towel, and still drying the rougher-than-sandpaper palms and fingers, she got out of the bathroom, closing softly the door behind her.

I don’t think you care if I slam the door or not, but I do mind. To me, the slogan ‘Treat others the way you wanna be treated’ is still in vogue.

And before she had the chance to turn her head toward the lying body lacking vitality of the woman she just cared for, her attention was attracted to the large window with the blinds rolled up.

What do you know, she addressed to the creature outside. You’ve been grazing here all this time.

The nurse then focused her attention on the delicate doe and smiled with tolerance. She noticed the female deer half an hour ago, while she entered room 27 for the routine treatments and ten-o-clock medication. She had a glance of the gentle Cervidae family representative once again when she gathered the used supplies, rinsed them, and lined them up on paper towels for the next time they will be needed. The mother will appreciate you more if you get rid of everything disposable rather than clean and reuse those syringes, suctioning tubes, and cannulas. She is a notorious germophobe. Any possible source of nosocomial infection should be eliminated, pulled out like undesirable weed, destroyed in the stage of idea, the nurse remembered her supervisor’s remark. What could be clearer than the crystal itself? In conclusion, put on your exterminator boots, get to work, and destroy every bug, starting from its zero nymphal instar. However, in her own belief powered by still alive memories of the times she was soaking the glass and metal syringes in chloramine solution and sending them for autoclaving in little metal boxes lined with gauze bedding, the self-confidence of a job well done is going to weigh greater in any comparison balance. After all, today I am solely responsible for the quality of the rendered care. All pots and pans are going to be banged on my head and only mine, in case they plan to do so. The difference between her and other nurses was that she trusted her guts and her nurse assistants 100 percent, which is a big mistake in the administrator’s eyes; in his perception, you can’t just lie down your license and your future at the goodwill of your subordinates. You have to make sure they are doing what they are supposed to, in other words, supervision, alertness, and again supervision. ‘Trust is not a fashionable trait of this millennium, admit it or not, Mr. Administrator, sir. I sure am old and obsolete in this matter, but I do have an excuse. I really believe in the power of self-determination."

"If I want to be at work just to watch the hours dragging their sixty minutes in a convalescent polygonal motion, I’ll make sure to play hide-and-seek behind a very busy attitude of doing perfectly nothing or close to absolutely zilch, coursing in zigzag between the ‘I must’ and ‘I have to’ and getting constantly on the case of my poor helpers. Sorry, but no, thanks. That’s not who