Word: wards
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...heard about Jim, who apparently delivered McDonald's shakes and burgers several times a week. He was one of the angels of Ward 57, a special breed of patrons who brightened up a day otherwise filled with surgery, needles, bad food and pain. The angels usually arrived in the quiet times. Doctors weren't making the rounds. Metal meal wagons had stopped clanking, the traffic of institutional do-gooders from the Red Cross and veterans' groups temporarily halted...
...will be $5. Bless you." But he mainly used treats to break the ice. After a couple of shakes, amputees were asking questions of the man who walked on two fake legs and worked for the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs. He was living proof there was life after Ward...
...visitors who were less familiar than Jim Mayer, the ward had a gatekeeper, an odd little man known as Mr. Nick. Sporting silver loops in both ears and wrapping his salt-and-pepper braids into a bun behind his head, 56-year-old James Melvin Nicholas stood out in the crew-cut, uniformed staff. The breast of his white lab coat was smothered in goodwill medals given to him by VIP guests. His accent was effeminate and Mississippian. He held the lowly title of medical support technician. But from behind the nurse's station, where he worked, everyone knew...
...caretakers intentionally kept their distance from the soldiers to maintain their morale. Captain Kathleen Yancosek couldn't get close enough. A rehabilitation specialist known by everyone simply as "Captain Katie," she was a razor-thin blonde who almost dissolved into tears when she visited her first patient on the ward, a teenage soldier who had lost a leg in Iraq. He was crying from the pain. His mother was hysterical. The 27-year-old therapist braced herself, realizing that she was supposed to be the one whom they had confidence in to help him get better...
...spouse, fretting about bills, or struggling to knot a tie with one hand. She made a habit of staying up at night to acquaint herself with their personal stories and continuously updating them. In mid-November, she walked in on Sergeant Heath Calhoun on his first day on the ward. He was sobbing in the arms of his wife and questioning how he could survive after both of his legs had been blown off by a rocket-propelled grenade. Though uncomfortable at first, Katie stuck around to console the 24-year-old Ranger, and from that day on followed each...