Jean Jones is immense, approaching freight-scale proportions. It was I who, meanly, nicknamed her Jabba the Hut, after the amorphous alien in the Star Wars series. The other nurses laughed, and the name stuck. It is not used, of course, within her earshot.
Cruel jokes aside, I like Jean Jones. I am often assigned to her when she comes in: she’s admitted to the psychiatric unit two or three times a year.
Last week, as I took off my coat, I saw her name on the census board at the nurses’ station. Discreetly, I murmured to Elaine, another nurse, “Jean’s back?”
