She shares a tiny office with three other people. It is pretty cramped, but her work is not hampered by the boundary of walls. What is important is the time she spends in the clinic.
There, she oohs and aahs over newborns, inquires about diet, checks for baby-size problems. She gives advice for diaper rash, explains breathing noises, gazes into innocent eyes. She regrets the tears that the shots will bring, listens to their tiny hearts.
Then she turns to the young mothers with her full attention and asks about their hearts: "So. How are you doing? ... What did you do then? ... And then?"
"I hear amazing stories every single day of the tenacity and grace of the human spirit. It's a real privilege to be the listener. It really is.
"Whether it's a medical patient, a teen who's pregnant or somebody who's homeless and relays to me the incredible story of their lives - sometimes I think it's kind of selfish that I get to be just the listener."
Babette Munting is a nurse practitioner at Terry Reilly Health Services in Nampa and the clinic in Boise. Most of her patients can't afford health care.
"I would venture that most people in everyday life haven't got the foggiest idea about what other people go through - you know? And then you see what grace they have in overcoming whatever has assailed them. It's just amazing."
Many of her clients live in poverty or wrestle with all kinds of abuse. They deal with complications from unhealthy lifestyles: people on the edge.
And yet, this is where she belongs. "Possessed and propelled" is what she calls it.
"You give people half a chance, (compassion) is there. I'm just so fortunate to hear these tales and perhaps I can be less judgmental because I get to hear such amazing things."
Babette aims unerringly for the jewel in the heart of everyone. Battle-scarred, in need of polishing, hidden beneath the weight of challenges and failures and beaten-down self-esteem - but she can see it.
"It's like ... if you start doing heavy drugs at 11 years old, it's really really hard to figure out who you are and how to get out of that. And to become your true self again. I hear stories like that all the time. And I have to take my hat off to these people. They're so strong."
She asks her clients if she can tell their stories to others who might someday need a little inspiration. The 11-year-old - by the time she was 13, she was shooting up with her mother.
"I just can't imagine how hard it must be to stop doing those drugs that just totally take over your life and allow you to get rid of everything you ever cared about."
Her sensitivity, her empathy, her caring comes to her like breathing. She doesn't think she has a special gift, and her stories shake my comfortable world. But it is her limitless compassion that brings me up short.
"I can't imagine the tragedy for the mother, who died clean and sober, for her to realize she was the one who really taught her children to use drugs."
The clinic sees an amazing number of people. Babette works a 40-hour week - on paper - seeing a couple dozen patients a day. That seems like a lot.
"It is a lot (of people) if it takes an hour to hear the story they have to tell ... I want to hear their story and not treat them like they just have, say, two problems. They are a whole person. I can't just look at a tiny part of person. It makes me very inefficient."
How do you keep the stories from breaking your heart?
"Occasionally you just get really sad about the state of human suffering. That we are the richest country in the world and we can't provide health care to our people.
"It's really shameful. People should not have to live without health care. That's what gets my goat the most: It's not my patients, it's the system."
From the outside, it seems like people just make poor decisions.
Babette looks at those same people through the eyes of her heart.
"Most people are doing the best they can with what they know how to do.
An alcoholic, burying sorrow. A drug addict who's never known anything else. A teen, looking for love and pregnant. Living in poverty with too many kids.
"The biggest thing my patients need, actually, is hopes and dreams. Goals. And then some support so they can reach those goals."
People go to the clinic when they are at their most vulnerable - sick, hurting, needy.
They see committed professionals like Babette who offer diagnosis, as much aid as they can, a referral; a hand, an ear, a heart.
And sometimes, a tiny seed will take root. Babette tells the story of a woman:
"She'll tell these amazing stories of how she was just a bad drug addict and she got clean and had all these opportunities in front of her. And she screwed up again.
"Then she got it together and got clean again.
"Sometimes you fall, but it doesn't mean you can't fix it again. There's always hope.
"Maybe my patients don't see that - but I see it."
Katherine Jones: 377-6414
