Like all the sweetest stories, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. The year is 1990. An ice storm slams the streets, just like the forecast had predicted. Four dialysis nurses plan to meet at Paparazzi’s, right off of the highway in Burlington, Mass. A perfect halfway point between all their hospitals, they decided while strategizing this parley weeks earlier. They had to get cracking on organizing the annual regional dialysis conference. As nursing managers, time is always of the essence. 

Diane calls Rhonda. 

Do you still think it’s worth meeting up today? 

Diane and Rhonda call the other two nurses to ask the same question. 

The question is almost rhetorical. 

Let’s try, each one affirms.

On the South Shore, Diane scrapes ice off her small sports car and hops in, revving the engine. Inland from the west, Rhonda climbs into her ice-caked rickety Camry. A little fishtailing never scares them. Both have an extra bag packed in the backseat, always prepared to stay overnight at their respective hospitals in a snowstorm. 

What could have been a thirty minute drive any other day spans into three hours of perilous tire-skating in the ice storm. 

Diane is the first to make it to Paparazzi’s. One by one, the three other dialysis nurses stomp in, covered in white mottle. Each orders food and alcohol. They eat and chat and laugh. I can’t believe we’re here, they keep echoing, chewing on fries and plastic straws. They don’t quite get to organizing the dialysis conference. Meanwhile, the snow piles up and up and up. But they don’t worry about the weather. As a nurse, you have to follow through, no matter what. The line between life and death is thin as ice. It demands commitment and preparation and good luck. 

Thirty years later, Diane and Rhonda comfortably share an office on the 10th floor of Dana-Farber where they work side by side as nurses. Their friend’s twelve year old plant spirals out over the cabinets, brushing up against family portraits and colorful knickknacks. In terms of commitment, preparation, and good luck, they hit the jackpot.  

Diane and Rhonda have been close friends for forty years. They’ve shared this office for four. This March, Diane is retiring. Though they don’t harp on it often at work, Diane and Rhonda have been each other’s rocks throughout. Their journeys have been winding, wild, and intertwined. 

Diane grew up in a small town in New England and moved to Boston, the “big city”, to go to nursing school. She and her best friend applied and enrolled together, helping each other study and survive the trials of clinical rotations. Nursing was a natural choice for her; she always wanted to “make life easier for people, get them through difficult times.” 

Rhonda, on the other hand, never quite knew what her career would look like. She went to college for a semester, and got married at eighteen. At nineteen, she gave birth to her daughter and got a divorce. She realized quickly that she needed a job. She became a nurse’s aid, went to licensed practical nursing (LPN) school when her daughter was 18 months old, and worked in a nursing home. Then, one fateful day, she saw an ad in the newspaper for an open dialysis nurse position. She got the job and Diane became her boss. The year was 1980. At this point, her daughter was four years old.  

When the time came for Rhonda’s first evaluation, she walked into Diane’s office and burst into tears. Surely, she thought, she had messed something up, and she would get a strict talking-to. “That’s not what an evaluation is at all!” Diane exclaimed. This is how their friendship began.

From that point, Rhonda decided to go back to school to become a registered nurse. She told Diane, “this is what I’m doing. Give me the hours I need.” Diane thought, “Dear, I don’t know how she’s going to do it. She’s got a little one at home, she’s running a household, working, and now, school?” But Diane obliged. 

Rhonda enrolled in the same program Diane had graduated from years earlier – the New England Deaconess Hospital School of Nursing, which has since closed. Her schedule was the epitome of hectic – juggling time as an olympic sport. Diane and Rhonda juggled time side by side for four years. Outside of work, on bright summer days, they would convene at another nurse friend’s house and enjoy the poolside. Rhonda’s daughter and Diane’s niece played in swimming pools together. 

Eventually, they separated ways, growing into their nursing scrubs as managers of dialysis in different units. They would call each other and organize conferences, projects, and chat about their families. 

As nurses, they witnessed the horrors and surprises of the human spirit. They felt their patients cower in pain, and fight through it. They nurtured hundreds of families through mournings and miracles. When their close friend, a fellow nurse, fell gravely ill, Diane and Rhonda held each other and tended to their friend together. When their friend died, they grieved together. 

They went on to keep each other up to date in the nursing world. Diane would write glowing references for Rhonda- so glowing in fact, that her interviewees would ask “Do you also walk on water?”. Rhonda often felt restless, itching for new experiences. Diane would pull through, even when it meant Rhonda would be leaving the nest of Diane’s wing. Rhonda listens to Diane “go on and on” about her family; Diane has supported Rhonda through “every stupid decision” she has made. We all make stupid decisions, Diane laughs. 

Four years ago, Rhonda called up Diane when a new nurse position opened up at the Dana-Farber. I watch them stroll in the halls together with ease, like sisters. I hear them chatting about patients, sharing heartwarming stories and stressful encounters. With Diane retiring, Rhonda recognizes the end of an era. She will miss Diane’s calm presence balming their office. 

Diane is looking forward to finally cleaning out her home, starting fresh, spending time with her nieces and her husband. “Our friendship will still be there, our friendship will go on,” says Rhonda. 

Nothing can stop these two nurses from their auspicious devotion to each other. Not a hard day at work, not a snowstorm, and definitely not retirement.  

“As nurses, you have to go in no matter what. It could be a giant snow storm, but there were always patients. If patients on dialysis don’t get their treatments they die,” Diane declares.

Rhonda adds matter-of-factly, “That carries over into other things we did. Bad weather? Whatever. That’s why we’re friends. Whatever we need to get done, we get it done”. 

As for retirement, it will be a new and significant  journey for both Diane and Rhonda. As Charles Dickens wrote to top off the Tale of Two Cities, “It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”

Happy retirement Diane! 

A huge thank you to Diane and Rhonda for sharing their stories and photos with us, and for being incredible people to work alongside! Thank you Audrey D. for sharing this ode to friendship with our genetics team at DFCI!