Instead of wings, she wears a baby blue T-shirt. She doesn’t feel like an angel.

But that’s exactly how her shirt describes her: an angel in the ER.

She is a carrier of Cokes and cups of ice, a bearer of warm blankets. She helps not with medicine or test results but with questions: How are you doing? Are you warm enough? Would you like something to drink while you’re waiting?

And sometimes she just listens: I’m hurting so bad. I hurt all over.

She brings a blanket from the warmer for the woman curled up on a bed and covers her, hoping this small gesture is worth something. The hardest thing, she says, is when she encounters someone she can’t help.

She is Pat Fisher, one of about 30 volunteers in the Angels in the ER program at Heartland Regional Medical Center. The program allows people to assist in Heartland’s emergency room for at least four hours a month by performing non-medical tasks to make patients and their families more comfortable.

“It’s a great program, because it allows the community to come in and help out without having clinical skills,” Barbie Squires, Heartland’s process leader for volunteer services, says. “They’re just there to comfort people, and I think that’s invaluable.”

It’s also a valuable experience for the volunteers, she says — sometimes just as much as it is for patients and their families. A story illustrating this that stands out in her mind is of a man named Charlie who volunteers with the program and who, on one of his shifts, stopped to talk to a 5-year-old patient.

“At first, the little boy didn’t know what to think, but once he was comfortable, he said, ‘You really are an angel, aren’t you?’” Ms. Squires says. “That made Charlie’s day. He tears up when he talks about it.”

In addition to offering comfort to ER visitors, the volunteers also ease nurses’ workload and free them to focus more on the clinical aspects of caring for patients. And because patients may have to wait while medical staff are tending to others or waiting for test results, the angels ensure they don’t go too long without someone checking on them.

“A lot of them say, ‘Thank goodness for the angels, because it seems like no one else comes in here,’” nurse Brad Lawrence says.

Long before Mrs. Fisher became an angel in the ER, she raised four sons, which she says gave her plenty of experience as the one waiting in an emergency room. She also has experience as a nurse from before she left the career 30 years ago to be a stay-at-home mom. And although having a medical background isn’t necessary for volunteers, she can see how hers benefits her.

“I don’t feel frightened of going in rooms, and I know every person is an individual and every illness is individual,” she says. “But at the same time, people all have basic needs for comfort and attention.”

Often for Mrs. Fisher, providing comfort is just a matter of stepping into a room and starting a conversation if patients or their families seem up to it. Especially when they’re elderly, what they seem to want most is simply someone to talk to, she says.

Of course, some people — like a doctor Mrs. Fisher served last week — prefer to pass their time in other ways. This particular patient wanted a medical journal, which sent her scouring the waiting areas outside the ER.

Returning a few minutes later with copies of several magazines — not medical journals, but something she hopes will suffice — Mrs. Fisher drops them off and moves on to her next room.

Are you doing OK, Hon? I don’t think you’re allowed to have anything to drink yet, but do you want a warm blanket?

On her way to fetch a straw for someone, she stops to smile at a baby being held by her father outside an exam room.

Hi, Sweetie. I see you.

Really, it’s this simple phrase — “I see you” — that she says in one way or another to everyone. And even in the absence of wings, this ability to truly see people and their needs takes Mrs. Fisher pretty far in living up to her title.

“So many people see my shirt and say, ‘What’s an angel?’” she says. “I think it’s someone who floats around and helps whoever they can.”

Apply to be an angel

Angels in the ER is a program run by Heartland Regional Medical Center’s volunteer services department. Volunteers are asked to work at least four hours a month, and anyone 21 or older can apply to participate in the program by filling out an application at www.heartland-health.com.

For more information, call 271-7868.

Lifestyles reporter Erin Wisdom can be reached at ewisdom@npgco.com