A joyous day

I am sooooo happy! I was worried about working on Election Night, as I feared making a spectacle of myself if the Other Persons won. Well, they didn’t win and I made a spectacle of myself anyway. When the happy moment came, I was in the room of a sleeping patient whose family told me they would have liked to vote for Sarah Palin for President, and were sad that was not an option. Yikes! These people were very nice, but, I fear, not politically astute. Fortunately, they went home early on. Anyhow, as I went about my job, I kept glimpsing these state returns on my patient's TV's, and they were all red. I was so upset and worried, and when ABC announced that, “Obama is the President-elect!” I started to cry, and could not stop. When I left the room, still crying, a woman came out of a room at the other end of the hall. She was a large, comfortable African woman whom I had not met, but her father’s nurse told me the day before that they were from Africa, and members of the same tribe as Obama’s father, and that the woman had cried with joy when her father was able to vote on a special hospital emergency ballot. I made a happy sign to her, and we rushed down the hall and collapsed into each others’ arms, both in sobbing for joy. One of our nurses, also from the same tribe, and who had greeted me earlier with “Yes, We Can!” joined the heap of sobbing women, and we had wonderful three way hugs. Everyone was jubilant, and I was glad that I was at work after all, and able to share this wonderful moment in our history with my co-workers. On the midnight bus ride home, I saw streets blocked off – filled with people celebrating the end of our national nightmare. Halleluia!!!!