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camp. Harry was particularly impressed with the lake. He thought its warm currents were from an underwater heating system. I didn’t correct him but did dispel the camp myth that was scaring him and the others about poisonous rainbow frogs that ate little kids’ toes. As for Max, he loved everything.
    “Where’s Max?” I asked his counsellor one day when I was down at the lake. The counsellor was stretched out, belly up, on the dock, a towel over his face.
    “No idea,” he mumbled from under the towel. He looked like he was taking a nap.
Was he the lifeguard?
Did I have to supervise the waterfront too? I clenched my teeth. Mothers probably made the best lifeguards, anyway, I thought as I scanned the beach for Max.
    “Nurse Tilda!” someone called. “You’re needed in the infirmary.” Okay, but where was Max? He was a bit of a wanderer, and though he always found his way back, I was worried. I could see kids gathering outside the infirmary at the top of the hill, waiting for me, so I headed back.
Max’ll show up
, I told myself.
    Just then, Wheels on his BMX bike came barrelling down the hill toward me at top speed. “Yo, Nurse! Comin’ through!”
    He had a passenger. Perched on the handlebars, his bare feet jutting out in front, was Max! “Boo-ya! Step off!” Wheels called out. I jumped out of the way just in time. Wheels slammed on the brakes, Max tumbled off and stood up, giggling madly.
    No helmet or protective pads? I scolded Wheels.
    By the time I got back to the infirmary, the place was packed. The ceramics instructor who often had just “one quick question” now had “just one more.” A little girl was pale and feeling “yucky.” Another kid claimed to have been attacked by a swarm of killer bees. There was a boy with a scraped arm, and a CIT who was complaining about a wart he’d had for the past three months. Zack was there, too. After my daily nagging, he’d finally showed up so I could clean his wound. (He hadn’t gotten sutures and now it was far too late.)
    I did what any nurse would do: triage. Mentally, I prioritized them from life-threatening conditions to emergencies, to potential serious problems, to everything else. With that logic in mind, I took the bee boy first, just in case he really had been swarmed and might be having an allergic reaction. But I couldn’t find any stingers and decided the small raised bump on his arm was merely a mosquito bite. (I most definitely did not follow theadvice from the first-aid wheel:
For insect stings: Remove stinger and wick the poison out with wet tobacco leaves
.) I put some soothing cream on the spot and sent him on his way. Then, I let the little girl who was feeling yucky lie down on a cot while I disinfected the boy’s scraped arm. A few of his friends had by now joined him, all of them trolling for Band-Aids. I tended to be stingy with Band-Aids and doled them out seldom and reluctantly. I preferred to leave small abrasions open to air. Band-Aids seemed useless and I dreaded coming upon soggy ones in the sand or clogging up the shower drain. “I’ll give you one,” I told the boy with the scraped arm, “but only if you promise to dispose of it in a garbage can when you take it off.” I told the CIT with the wart to wait till he got home to get treatment. Finally, I turned to Zack’s knee. Although it was the most serious problem, it would take the longest to treat. The moment I saw it, red and inflamed around the open edges, oozing with thick, sticky pus, I knew it was infected. He would have to see a doctor for antibiotics. I was furious. This infection was totally preventable.
    “Why didn’t you come to me earlier to have this wound cleaned? This happened almost a week ago! You’re a counsellor. You should know better.”
    Zack didn’t argue. He looked sheepish. Just then, a tough-looking kid wearing purple-brown fingernail polish and filthy jeans with heavy chains hanging out of the pocket burst into the waiting