My Angels,

Let me introduce you to my angels. They live in a separate world, surrounded by wires, tubes, machines, and noises that unsettle anyone who doesn’t belong there. They come from different backgrounds, nationalities, and age groups. Their clothing may be different colours: some white, others mint green, some light blue, and some dark blue. Whatever their differences, they work together as a united family.

When you first meet these special people, you may feel intimidated, even frightened, about stepping into their private world. Yet if, G-D forbid, you ever need to be with them and come to know them, you will understand how blessed you are that they exist.

Learning the language of the ward

Hospitals are frightening places, and part of what makes them so is that they run on a hierarchy you only really understand if you are part of the system. Those coloured uniforms are not chosen at random; each one quietly tells the people inside that world who is who, whose decision something is, and who to turn to. For the rest of us, sitting beside a bed and trying to make sense of it all, the colours are simply a blur of busy people moving with purpose.

It takes time to learn that language. You begin to recognise faces, then names, then the particular way each person speaks to the patient in the bed. Slowly, the blur becomes a team, and the team becomes the people you look for the moment you walk through the doors. Sometimes the person you feared most is the softest under the uniform.

What visitors never see

As a visitor, you see a fraction of what happens on a ward. You see the call bell answered, the drip changed, the pillow turned to the cool side. What you rarely see is everything that surrounds those moments: the notes written up at the end of a long shift, the handover in which one nurse passes the care of your loved one into another’s hands.

You do not see how often they are pulled in several directions at once, nor how they carry the weight of one patient’s bad news into the next bay with a smile still in place.

As I sit beside my father Shlita, I watch them do this hour after hour, and I realise that kindness on a hospital ward is not a soft extra. It is a skill, practiced under pressure, and it is given over and over again to strangers.

Who cares for the carers?

Spending so many hours beside them, I see the people behind the uniforms. Many of the women caring for my father are in midlife themselves, juggling long shifts with children, grandchildren and ageing parents of their own. Some are tired in a way sleep alone won’t fix, and a few are quietly managing their own health while giving every ounce of attention to their patients.

It makes me wonder who looks after them. We ask so much of the people who staff our wards, and we often forget that their wellbeing matters just as much as the care they provide. When we support them, we are not taking anything away from patients; we are making sure that the hands holding our loved ones are steady, rested and cared for too.

Thank you

So, this is my thank you to the angels in white, mint green, light blue burgundy and dark blue. Thank you for the patience you show when we ask the same question for the third time, for the warmth you give to a frightened family, and for treating my father with the dignity he has always deserved.

To anyone reading this who has a loved one in hospital, I would gently suggest that you learn their names, say thank you out loud, and remember that behind every uniform is a person carrying far more than you can see. And to my angels: may you be blessed with the same care and kindness that you give so freely to others.

With all my love

Chani Schreibhand on behalf of all our family.