1.
You all know the story by now. Two silly Australian DJ's, a man and a woman pretending to be Prince Charles and the Queen, respectively, called the hospital where the pregnant Duchess of Cambridge had been admitted for a severe case of morning sickness. Despite their horrible accents, they were put through by the first nurse to Middleton's nurse, who gave a few bland details of the royal patient's very non-life-threatening condition. The next day, one of the nurses, who undoubtedly felt more shame than she could bear for having been so royally duped, committed suicide. Her name was Jacintha Saldhana, a reportedly excellent nurse; married; had a family, husband, son, daughter; gone forever at age 46.
It is important to note that she wasn't the nurse who gave the details about Kate's condition. When the telephone rang, she answered as follows:
Hello, King Edward VII Hospital.
One of the pranksters, pretending to be the Queen, asked to be put through to her granddaughter.
Ms Saldhana replied:
O yes, just hold on, Ma'am.
Then the call was put through.
That's all she said--that's all! For this was driven by shame into suicide. It reminds me of poor kid I read about in an article the premise of which is that nowadays, unlike in the past, suicides not infrequently occur at a young age. The boy, age 7, hanged himself because of guilt. He had clipped off the wings of a bug.
2.
What a horrible, unexpected--and preventable--tragedy! I'm not going to write about the foolish DJ's who made the call, nor about the society that paid them to act like spoiled kids. I want to write about her.
Moved by such tragedies, I often fancy myself as being an Angel of Empathy--such is my vanity,-- able to travel not only through the air like Ariel, but also back in time, on the shoulders of of a tachyon, to a person about to commit suicide. Give me the gun! You're thirteen years old and have no idea what you're doing! If he didn't listen to my wise counsel--such is my vanity--I would get help or stay with him--or even restrain him--until the crisis passed.
I wish I could have talked with the young man, who had been one of my patients, as he got ready to murder his parents and sibling. I also wish I could have talked with Jacintha Saldhana, just before she decided to die.
If I had been vanity-transported, I would feel like saying, almost in anger, "What is the matter with you! You're 46 and the mother of two! By now you should know that acute feelings of shame pass, like everything else. How can it be that an educated woman has reached your age without perspective or a sense of proportion? THINK OF YOUR CHILDREN--Do they deserve to be deprived of their mother FOREVER --for this?"
But, for her sake, I would remain calm yet say what I almost said in anger with understanding tempered by firmness.
She stares through me. She doesn't even cry. "For your children's sake, Ms. Saldhana, will you at least listen to what I have to say?" She nods her head.
3.
You are an educated woman of Indian origin, thus by definition, a lover of Shakespeare. Am I right? She nods again.
Let me reacquaint you with Parolles, a cowardly blowhard from Shakespeare's All's Well that EndsWell. He is corrupting the young, callow hero, Bertram, with his lies. An older, wise gentleman throws this is Parolles's face:
Go to, sir. You were beaten in Italy for picking a kernel out of a pomegranate. You are a vagabond, and no true traveler. You are more saucy with lords and honorable personages than the commission of your birth and virtue gives you heraldry. You are not worth another word, else I'd call you knave.
Bertram, however, continues to think highly of his friend. A war is going on, and a plot is devised to trick Parolles into showing his true colors. Friends of Bertram capture Parolles and blindfold him before he can identify any one. In a hilarious scene, he is brought to a place which "the interpreter" informs him is the enemy camp. He hears a nonsense language all around him which he believes to be the native language of the enemy. The interpreter informs him that he is threatened with death and torture if he doesn't divulge information about his country's army. He gives them more information than demanded, and denounces his compatriots, including Bertram, the Count of Rousillon. He reveals himself as a vile, backbiting coward, doing anything to save his life. Then the blindfold is taken off and he looks into the faces of those he had just denounced.
Now that's what I call humiliation. Was Parolles, who had talked on and on about being a hero, driven to suicide? Left alone by those pranksters who thought Parolles wasn't even good enough to be killed, this is what Parolles said:
Yet I am thankful. If my heart were great,
'Twould burst at this. Captain I'll be no more,
But I will eat and drink and sleep as soft
As captain shall. Simply the thing I am
Shall make me live. Who knows himself a braggart
Let him fear this: for it will come to pass
That every braggart shall be found an ass.
Rust, sword! Cool, blushes and, Parolles, live.
If shame can't defeat a bad man, why should it defeat a good woman?
If that didn't work I'd tell her about the true story of a man who lost his only child and wife in an accident. He was drifting toward suicide but somehow went on. He couldn't imagine that life would ever be worth living again. Seven years later he was remarried, the proud stepfather of two children who adored him. No, the tragic hole in his life would never be filled--but a delightful country had risen around it. Point is, people in the grip of despair imagine it will last forever. They imagine a desperate future, and, quite frequently, are happily surprised with what the future can bring. That is, if they survive the initial shock.
If that didn't work, I'd tell her about the times I felt humiliated and terribly small. Yes, sometimes I feel like a weed. Then, after some time, perhaps just a day, I really feel like a weed. A weed accepts life and fights to survive with no less vigor than a redwood tree. And we're not mere weeds. True, we can be racked by despair, but we also are able , if we work at it, to make amazing progress in wisdom and love.
Did you think you were SuperNurse? Did your ego suffer shame? If I found that to be true, I would quote Whitman: "Nor do I criticize the tortoise for not being something else."
I would go on and on.
If nothing worked I would restrain her, as the sailors restrained Odysseus, until all the destructive Sirens were silent.
If shame can't defeat a bad man, why should it defeat good woman?
3.
After a while she would understand. She'd think of her husband, she'd think of her children, and think how dangerous--and ridiculous--it had been to feel such shame. She'd take off a few days, then return to work and be an even better nurse than before.
Such is my fantasy. For you sake, Jacintha Saldhana, I wish that my inner Walter Mitty, the great Empathy Angel, had been on the morning of December 7th, no fantasy; I wish help had been real as the sorrow we feel.
Another fantasy: a potential Jacintha will access this article on the Internet, which will help her realize that dark emotions are as volatile as the light, and that--even if she's no better than Parolles--she would have a good cry, have a good laugh--and live!
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