My Land of Counterpane or My Résumé

By J.C. Hamilton-Romney

The author is a retired registered nurse who has published three previous works: I’m Not Allowed to Say is about her experience as an active duty army captain; At the Foot of Rawlins Mountain is a series of vignettes of life growing up on an island paradise; and Casualties of Life details her early childhood, nursing training and the vagaries of life. Although not part of a series, two of these books dealt with her early nursing training and experience. All three were published under the name J’nette C. Bryant. This current work is a comprehensive detail of her nursing career as viewed through the eyes of, and experienced by, an emigrant. It covers a wide variety of health care settings to include: nursing homes, private and public sectors, and military and veterans’ administration institutions.

The author has one daughter and lives in New York.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jan 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9781398469006

J.C. Hamilton-Romney

The author is a retired registered nurse who was born on the island of Nevis. She completed her training in St Kitts, West Indies, and emigrated to the United States shortly after. There she continued her career and worked in a variety of health care settings: nursing home, private and public hospitals, military and veterans administration facilities. She is a graduate of Long Island University, Brooklyn, and Herbert H. Lehman College, Bronx, New York. Her previous works include: I’m Not Allowed to Say, 2000; At the Foot of Rawlins Mountain, 2006; and Casualties of Life, 2007. Although not part of a series, two of these works dealt with aspects of her early training and experience and all three were published under the name J’nette C. Bryant. She has one daughter and lives in New York.

Book preview

About the Author

The author is a retired registered nurse who was born on the island of Nevis. She completed her training in St Kitts, West Indies, and emigrated to the United States shortly after. There she continued her career and worked in a variety of health care settings: nursing home, private and public hospitals, military and veterans administration facilities. She is a graduate of Long Island University, Brooklyn, and Herbert H. Lehman College, Bronx, New York. Her previous works include: I’m Not Allowed to Say, 2000; At the Foot of Rawlins Mountain, 2006; and Casualties of Life, 2007. Although not part of a series, two of these works dealt with aspects of her early training and experience and all three were published under the name J’nette C. Bryant. She has one daughter and lives in New York.

Dedication

To my daughter, Janell, who travelled with me along the way.

Copyright Information ©

J.C. Hamilton-Romney 2023

The right of J.C. Hamilton-Romney to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

All of the events in this memoir are true to the best of author’s memory. The views expressed in this memoir are solely those of the author.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781528978729 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398468993 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781398469006 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

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E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

This book is dedicated to my daughter, Janell, whom I’ve considered a fellow traveller along my career path. But I would be remiss if I did not include those persons who have in some way influenced my growth and development and encouraged me in my endeavour as a professional nurse.

First, I wish to thank my godmother, Theodocia Arthurton, who first took me to church and fostered my religious upbringing; my Sunday school teacher Jimmy Brown, who taught me to believe in myself and to never forget who I was, and whose I was; my Aunt Elizabeth Pemberton, whose encouragement and support were a constant through all the changing scenes of my life and kept me afloat.

I also wish to thank those persons who influenced me during my early training as a student nurse. Matron Louise Walwyn; ward sisters B. Bell and Winnifred McMahon; staff nurses Lorraine Liburd, Melvina Christmas, and Rosemary Lawrence; and Doctor Cuthbert Sebastian.

In addition, I wish to thank those persons whose positive influence and belief in me kept me sane during some trying periods as I negotiated my way through the diverse paths I chose to maintain in my professional status as a registered nurse. My first supervisor, Susan Dietz; director of nursing Janet Freeman; head nurses Mary O’Donnell, Jennifer DeStacio and Ramona Fiorey; Helen Wilson and Etta White; and Doctors Courtney Wood and Kevin Kelley. In gratitude.

The Land of Counterpane

When I was sick and lay a-bed,

I had two pillows at my head,

And all my toys beside me lay

To keep me happy all the day.

And sometimes for an hour or so,

I watched my leaden soldiers go,

With different uniforms and drills,

Among the bed-clothes, through the hills.

And sometimes sent my ships in fleet,

All up and down among the sheets;

Or brought my trees and houses out,

And planted cities all about.

I was the giant great and still

That sat upon the pillow-hill,

And sees before him dale and plain,

The pleasant land of counterpane.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Introduction

My first remembered experience in the Land of Counterpane was at the age of four when I became sick with a bout of chest infection, perhaps pneumonia or other malady. In those days, doctors made home visits and my mother, fearful that I might pass it on to my baby sister, quickly sent for the doctor and I was pampered back to health on our living room sofa. This I vaguely remember but was reinforced by my older brother who through the years occasionally referred to my ‘pampered state’ and of my need to be ‘carried about’ by himself and my elder brother (deceased).

However, I recall my next spell in the Land of Counterpane at the age of seven when I was in the second grade. It was the Saturday before Easter Sunday when I accidentally stepped on a piece of broken bottle and lacerated my right heel. Not wanting to miss out on Sunday nor the festivities on the following Monday which was a holiday celebrated with outings such as dances, garden parties and horse racing, I kept quiet about my injury.

The following Tuesday when I returned to school, I had an inguinal lymph node the size of a bird’s egg that was so painful, I limped all the way to school and did not get in line to perform exercises with my classmates. This prompted Teacher Lucille to investigate and I showed her the cause of my ailment. She sent me straight away to the health centre and told me not to return to school until Nurse said it was alright to do so.

At the health centre, I was given injections, my wound dressed and I was sent home with instructions to stay off my feet and return to the clinic in two days. Upon arrival home, my mother, who perhaps felt chastened for not noticing my predicament before sending me off to school, was now solicitous since both teacher and nurse had ordered me home. I was made comfortable on the living room sofa beneath the window overlooking the veranda; from this perch I could look out on the village and passers-by; the thought that I would not have to perform chores for the duration was more than gratifying.

That afternoon, Gracie, my classmate and neighbour, brought me my homework and the second-grade reader on loan so that I could keep up with my lessons. The next day I waved the children from my village off to school, pleased that I was excused. By mid-morning, however, when I could no longer hear the singing from morning devotions and with my mother off to work in the fields, I felt lonely so started reading from my reader and had devoured the entire book by the time I returned to school two weeks later. That spell away from school ushered in my appetite for reading and it has not yet been sated.

When I was twelve years old, I fell and broke my left wrist. (I use the word broke loosely since this was not confirmed until years later when, as an adult, I had an x-ray taken of my wrist and the old fracture was revealed.) It was on the Saturday following the last day of school and the beginning of the summer holidays. Between my mother and our next-door neighbour, they ‘fixed’ my swollen wrist bandaging it with rotten banana leaves and vinegar, and I was out of commission for the next six weeks.

A whole summer without chores was a blessing in disguise and I enjoyed my reprieve. No chores, no punishment; and although not a bed, it was ‘my land of counterpane’ and in time I came to view illness itself as a reprieve from life’s toils, though few seem to see it as the great privilege it really is. To be succoured by nurses and each other this quote by Elizabeth Barrett-Browning comes to mind:

I think it frets the saints in heaven to see

How many desolate creatures on earth

Have learnt the simple dues of fellowship and social comfort, in a hospital.

Pushkin, of course, had a slightly different take on this in Eugene Onegin:

My uncle, man of firm convictions

By falling gravely ill, he’s won

A due respect for his afflictions—

The only clever thing he’s done.

May his example profit others;

But God, what deadly boredom, brothers,

To tend a sick man night and day,

Not daring once to slip away!

And, oh, how base to pamper grossly

And entertain the nearly dead,

To fluff the pillows for his head,

And pass him medicines morosely—

While thinking under every sigh:

The devil take you, Uncle Die!

Prologue

In speaking to my daughter who delights in listening to my anecdotes about my experiences as a nurse, she said she can remember almost everything I said, but to my dismay, her tendency is to extrapolate a different meaning altogether. Over time I would listen as she retold my stories, and I would say, I haven’t even left the room and you have managed to change the story altogether; just imagine if you had to write it for me! Therefore, I’m writing it myself.

During my lifetime, many things have been said about me both positive and negative, but we remember most especially the negative, and even the positive were often said more as backhanded compliments. Here are a few:

From a next-door neighbour, H is too farad (she must have meant forward), but she is the best looking of her mother’s children.

From one of the nursing ward sisters (the equivalent of a nursing supervisor/head-nurse) early in my career: You are neither good nor bad, to which my nurse cousin had said in alarm when I told her of sister’s comment, That means you are lukewarm and the Bible said about lukewarm people, God will spew them out of his mouth.

Rev. 3:16 (KJV) actually said, neither hot nor cold, but my religious cousin whom sister had called ‘good’ in comparison to me, feared for my lukewarm soul. Sometime later, that same sister had said to me, Nurse H, let your conscience be your guide, as I tended to be over conscientious in my duties. Go figure!

Another of the ward sisters said to me, Anybody see you there like butter can’t melt in your mouth, they don’t know what a little bitch you can be. She had tried to hinder my progress and I was compelled to report her to the matron.

Much later in my career, a nursing supervisor said to me, You are neither fish nor fowl—whatever that means—adding, Things have a way of happening to you.

Later still in graduate school one of my professors said to me, Be careful what you wish for, you might get it, this while she was complimenting me on my writing in comparison to that of other black American students.

Yet another, head nurse (in the military) this time said, You have a certain demeanour that rubs people the wrong way.

From another supervisor, You don’t know how to ‘schmooze’ people.

And finally from my last head nurse, You are too much of a perfectionist.

The above statements must be the truth about me because they were made by persons of diverse ethnicity who were in positions to observe me closely.

In nursing school, I learned of the Johari Window which I simplify as how we see ourselves in relation to how we are perceived by others. Somewhere there is the real person, and perhaps we are not two but three dimensional after all.

Putting Things Back Together

Immediately after hanging up the phone, I realised I had forgotten to give the name of the airline to my sister. Therefore, no one was there to greet me when on a cold Thursday evening in January, frightened but pregnant with hope, I arrived in the Land of Opportunity. (Interestingly, it was the sight of the Twin Towers, not the Statue of Liberty, that enthralled me as the aeroplane descended into JFK.) The momentary sense of dread one feels being in a strange place, coupled with the panic of abandonment, seemed to signify that the ground on which I stood, would in perpetuity be unstable.

It felt like aeons before my brother and sister arrived to collect me. And before I could gain some sense of stability, before I could collect my bearings my sister, eager for me to find a job, not wanting the responsibility of two extra mouths to feed, sent me out seeking employment. It was in this state of expectancy that I went knocking on hospital doors looking for work—begging really—since anyone who goes job-hunting in such an advanced state is advertising her dire need.

I was ripe to be taken advantage of and was. Meanwhile, I became immersed in American politics watching the Watergate Hearings and getting hooked on soap operas, but today it is difficult to differentiate one from the other. And, I read all the books my sister had on her bookshelf, except, she cautioned me, The Exorcist that I was not to read in my condition. Little did she know that before leaving home I had read Rosemary’s Baby a book I considered far more terrifying.

The Nursing Home Experience

1973–1977

My first job was at a nursing home where I was hired as a registered nurse (RN). The person who hired me, a tall white female, the assistant director of nursing, whose most distinguishing feature was her piercing eyes that she used, it seemed, to intimidate (she of course did not know that I had met a better class of white Americans), said I was hired per diem, a term I was not then familiar with but must have agreed to at the time.

In this status, I received no benefits, the import of which I did not then understand: it meant I was not entitled to any vacation time, no sick days, no holiday pay, no time-and-a-half for working overtime, no evening/night differential pay. This I learnt later after reporting for work. I do not recall salary being discussed. As a former government employee nurse’s salary was standard, therefore it was accepted, not negotiated.

However, I was glad to have landed a job. (My sister used to say that things were easier for me, I guess because it took her eight months before she found a job and because I had walked into a Social Security office, applied for and within two weeks received my card.) But back to my first job where I would later learn that I was being paid as a Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN). In addition, I worked full-time even though I was per diem.

And while the other full-time nurses worked every other weekend, I got one weekend off a month. It was only after talking with the others in the orientation class that I learned of my lone status.

There were five of us in that first orientation class: three Jamaicans, one Asian, and myself. The Jamaicans asked which island I was from and when I gave the name they laughed and said, Oh, small island, and turned aside as though I was not worth knowing further. The term small island is used by Jamaicans to denote their larger size than that of the other Caribbean islands, under British rule at that time. It was the first time I’d ever heard the term used but it would not be the last.

Both the Asian nurse and I were assigned to the same unit. I would learn later from my supervisor that this nurse was being paid a higher salary than I was and she said I should report this disparity to the labour board, but I was on shaky ground so I did not follow up on the matter.

And once when I was persuaded to work overtime on the evening tour, I did not receive overtime pay nor the evening differential; therefore, I never again did so. Since my status could have been construed as questionable—despite my worker’s permit—the fear of deportation was ever with me. So, I did whatever was required of me (which meant floating to other units or working as a nurse’s aide) not wanting to antagonise my employer/supervisors.

The majority of the nursing staff seemed to be from someplace other than the United States—a veritable representation of the United Nations. There was a spirit of co-operation at first because we were all insecure in our newness. Later, this feeling of we are in the same boat changed to: we may be in the same boat but I am different from you; and later still to: we may be in the same boat but I am not like you, in fact, I am better than you because America said so.

Since there is no one else to dump on, even black Americans dumped on people from the Caribbean; we are lumped into one category, namely, Jamaicans; and they in turn dumped on small islanders. (Blacks from Africa, interestingly, seem exempt.) America suffers from what I term the ‘dumping syndrome’ it does not get any lower than to be from a small Caribbean Island. This I had to learn as I was to learn of other disparities practised in the good old US of A. One really had to have a ‘sense of self’ not to get trampled in the melee.

Once the ‘Culture Shock’ had worn off, our prejudices replaced whatever sense of esprit de corps existed while we settled into our respective social niches. Most others were upgraded no matter from what hovels, trenches, or swamps of Europe and Asia they escaped. However, a black person was always downgraded.

This downgrading of the human being, and eventually of the human spirit—if not humanity itself, is what I find the most gruelling and still has the tendency to set my teeth on edge. It is the main reason why I feel compelled to write because these days I see America as perhaps every black person does, in the words of Barbara Vine, ‘A Dark Adapted Eye’.

I felt the unfairness of my position but was powerless to do anything about it. So that in time, the gratitude I first felt soon changed to displeasure as the feeling of being exploited took hold. Over the next ten months, whenever a new group of nurses was hired, I went to the person hiring, requesting to be placed on full-time status. My request was denied and she referred to my non-permanent status (thinly veiled as a threat) and the fact that I did not have an RN license (few of us newly hired nurses did, we had work permits pending licensure) as the reason for her denial.

Once she even referred to my single-parent status and hurled at me, "Where