of course

Of course my sister hooked up with that attractive nurse who set her ankle after she sprained it. To think she would have done otherwise would have been to doubt the inevitability of time, taxes, or the attraction of natural disasters for the Florida coastline. While somewhat less invasive as a cosmic law, Sako does have her own way of getting, well, her own way. Out in the boonies of Yosemite, where indoor plumbing is a revelation and electricity is, unless generated with the aid of a static-haunted gerbil and a hand crank, foreign, she managed to find not one, but two young men delighted at the prospect of being her boy toy. One of them is this gorgeous nurse of hers, while the other--

"My rebound relationship," she called him, cheerfully. "Nothing long-term. I told him so." Which convenience, notwithstanding, did not prevent him from trotting back from Arizona to visit her during the long weekend, much to her chagrin.

It is a comfort for me that, even though I am the plain one in most pairings, I can be plain in comparison to someone who is hot. Sako stopped by during one of her rare visits to civilization yesterday, browned a chocolate color from the sun and looking fit, healthy, and strong enough to snap a man's spine like a twig. On our way through the checkout line, our friendly cashier eyed my sister -- her nose thrust deep in a container of Safeway cafeteria-style Chicken Mandarin -- and asked me, "Sisters?"

"Yup."

"How would you feel about becoming my sister-in-law?"

It may not have been the most creative pick-up line I've ever heard (vicariously or not) but I found it entertaining enough that I readily answered all his questions about her, until she finally protested that she was not deaf, and that she was capable of answering questions with her very own mouth. At which point he directed his interest to her directly, and she fled.

A side effect of her current flame and her new job in Yosemite, full-time Search & Rescue, is that she has decided that she wants to become a nurse. This is a decision that has inspired some hilarity and dismay among her closer acquaintances and family. Her family is primarily concerned with the realization that this will entail another two years of school. While we are perfectly willing to support her through another two years of school, we can't help but recall that the last time it took her to go through two years of school, she took, shall we say, a little longer.

"I get straight As," she protested, when confronted last night.

"You're on your tenth year of a four year degree. Your university has actually terminated your degree program."

"Straight As! And I'm going to graduate next year!" She paused. "Well, except for Biology. I got a C- on that."

I think, taken in context, we are rather justified in our reservations.

Her friends have other concerns about my sister's new career choice: namely, that she hates sick people. This, they seem to think, is something of an impediment to a career in medicine. "You're mean," they apparently told her. "You have no sympathy."

"I think if the sick people weren't people I knew, it would be easier to be nice to them," she told me, without denying the justice of her friends' objections.

I suspect that Sako is molded along the same lines of my great-aunt Kanae, who at the age of 70 has never been sick a day of her life. Near the end of my college experience, I once went to visit her in Chicago. I cannot remember the exact dates involved; whatever the month, snow was still cold and icy on the ground, and the wind chill factor alone was enough to make me, hardened after six years of Rochester winters, shiver.

Kanae-chan met me at the train station, popped me in a car, and then drove me to a bird sanctuary where she chivied me outside to stare at birds for the next few hours. It was educational and interesting. A little later, back in the warmth of the condo, it was fever, headache, and aching. The next morning I was huddled in a bed, coughing, shivering, and feeling like an unsuccessful test dummy, when Kanae-chan popped in and wanted to know what was wrong with me. I dimly recall the conversation going something like this:

Kanae: "What's wrong with you?"

Me: "I'm sick."

Kanae: "Sick? I don't understand."

Me: "SICK. Fever. Headache. Chills. Sick."

Kanae: "Why are you sick?"

Me: "You dragged me into below-freezing weather WITHOUT A COAT and made me look at BIRDS."

Kanae: "Don't be silly. I'm never sick, and I'm old. I'll bring you some soup and then we can go and do things."

Me: "No. I'm sick. I'm not going anywhere."

Kanae: "Your problem is that you're not doing anything. If you were doing something, you wouldn't think you were sick. We should go outside and distract you with some sightseeing. Rest will just make you morbid."

Me: "Go away."

Kanae: "Are you better yet?"

It seems to be a character trait of my mother's side of the family; my mother, too, suffers from the same ruthlessness when it comes to illness. Not soon will I forget the occasion on which she called me in sick to school, then forced me to paint the house. It's true that I was actually faking illness, but still, it seems to show a callousness that is utterly inappropriate in a maternal figure.

My sister's treatment of sick people, by all accounts, inclines towards treating sick people as inconveniences to her schedule. "You're sick? What are you, stupid?" --as though they had a choice in the matter and made the wrong one. Her friends think this is a bad quality in a nurse. One of the doctors I spoke to, on the other hand, seems to think this is a admirable quality in a health professional.

"Sure," he said. "Tough love. My mother was like that."

On the other hand, (said the doctor) he was Jewish, so what the hell did he know about how normal mothers treated their sick children. "You'll probably be just like her, too," he added.

"I'm not going to be a Jewish mother."

He withheld comment.

Last week I received a plaintive little phone message from Sako. "It's been two weeks, and I still want to be a nurse. That's a good sign, right?"