I’ve been talking a lot, on Facebook, about my hospitalization, but there are some things I need to write down before I forget them. Eventually, I WILL be quiet, but I’ve been thinking about the nurses at Cottage—where I detoxed for five days– and about my friends who are nurses.

In short, my nurses were incredible. They were cheerful, accommodating if I asked for something, and vigilant about vital signs, blood draws, meds and so on.

Most of all, they were kind.

Yet they had to deal, as a group, with patients who were experiencing psychotic breaks, the kind where they had to clear us out of the halls for our safety.

There were two of these at the same time one morning and all the nurses closed ranks around those patients, talking them through their crises, but that morning they needed the help of four large security staffers, their backup.  The security men later escorted the patients, one of them my short-term roommate, to a ward where they could get more intensive care and more potent medications.

So this is what I found out: Being a nurse can be scary. I didn’t realize this, and this was the guy who, during one stay in the ER, wanted to rip aside the room’s dividing curtain and pummel the doctor I overheard referring to the nurse assisting him as “sweetie.”

The nurses don’t know this, but they became my friends. I also made friends with the women who cleaned our rooms, Maria and Joanna. They were, like the nurses, unbelievably sunny. My ego demanded that I share a few words in Spanish with them, and they were admirably tolerant.

My new friends included a boy who couldn’t get through two sentences without suddenly putting his hand over his heart and starting to cry.

There was an older man who couldn’t get discharged and so was palpably, painfully sad. He owned everything he’d done while using, so maybe part of what looked like sadness was a actually a kind stoic strength. I guess wisdom, once it’s earned, hurts like hell. Thankfully, he finally got out early on the Friday I did. We shook hands and looked squarely at each other, the way that men do when they communicate the euphemism “regard” for each other when the proper and more accurate word is “love.”

There was a young woman, small and fine-boned, who spoke so softly that she affirmed my need for new hearing aids. She had the profile of a Nubian princess. She was very black and incredibly lovely. In fact, she was, I thought, one of the most beautiful young women I’d ever known, and thirty-plus years of teaching guarantees that I’ve known thousands of beautiful young women.

Phone Man was ALWAYS on the phone, making arrangements, keeping tabs, deciding decisions, I think all of it for his business. He was never really in the hospital, not at all. I did not like him.

Another young man—there were a LOT of young men—beamed proudly when, after four times, he remembered my name. He was very tall, sweet and unassuming, but I’m not sure if his mother had ever really loved him.

An older woman (my age) had been a world traveler, another was homeless. That woman’s life was scored by the deaths of those she loved the most, and the loss showed. She was a little stooped, had lost a few teeth, had lost one of the arms on her eyeglasses, had lost everything she owned except for the clothes she wore into the ward. She now wore the tan scrubs and static socks that Cottage provides.

Only twenty-four hours after coming in, and abstaining from drinking, I overheard a conversation she had with a nurse. The woman I’d pitied was intelligent, articulate, focused on her future after discharge. I was chastened. She was a remarkable person who needed, if just for a few days, a place where she could find herself again. “Remarkable” is almost the right word. “Miraculous” might be a better one for her.

Maybe all of us, after all, are miraculous.