Geneen at Hospitalito Atitlán

Geneen, my wife, is an RN, and works 40 hour weeks as a volunteer at the hospitalito. She had worked several days in a row, and finally had Monday off. She was nearing burnout, and I was glad she was scheduled to have Tuesday off as well.

We go to bed early here. There's not much to do. Often, the music from one of several evangelical churches bounds across the water and through the cabin walls, making an early bedtime difficult, but that was not the case Monday. We were sound asleep at 10:30 when my phone rang. Geneen was called in to work to escort a patient to Guatemala City.

When the hospitalito gets a difficult case, they send the patient either to Sololá, about an hour away, or the capital, about 3 hours away. The patient, about 20 years old, had a large amount of fluid in her lungs, and needed assistance in breathing. The ordeal was so stressful for Geneen, that, on the highway, she had to have the ambulance stop so she could get out and vomit.

Upon arriving at the larger facility, the receiving nurse chastised Geneen for not removing the patient's jewelry. The fact that this was the first thing the nurse said was disturbing to Geneen. The ambulance crew left, and on the way back Geneen got to witness the beauty of the dawn. Lots of birds, beautiful fields, a smoldering volcano...

Then they got a call from the capital. The patient had died, and the ambulance crew had to tell the family to go back and get the corpse.