Slow Walk to the Phone

“Slow walk to the phone” is an expression used by older nurses as a sarcastic reaction to certain patients who are for full active resuscitation. Such gallows humor has not gone unnoticed in these short stories, spanning three decades. The book also features the joy of connection and the marvel at resilience. It starts at the Mater Hospital in Brisbane in 1979 and weaves its way until 2019 through other hospitals and homes in Victoria, South Australia, and New South Wales. There are over thirty essays, remembering situations and characters in their homes and their conversations and the nurses who helped make it easier. Grieving for strangers and mothers, not coping at work and after work, and dealing with the tragic farce of restructure are just some of the issues nurses face every day. Some pieces are derived from the freefall writing technique, a concept refined by Canadian writer/teacher Barbara Turner-Vesselago in her book Writing Without a Parachute: The Art of Freefall. This is Mary’s first book.