The Nurses: A Year of Secrets, Drama, and Miracles with the Heroes of the Hospital by Alexandra Robbins Read Free Book Online

Avenue Hospital, they still gathered a few times a year for parties and called each other for advice or comfort. Juliette and Molly were particularly tight. Neither woman was afraid to speak her mind.
    When they left Avenue, Juliette and Molly had worked briefly for an agency that had sent them to Pines, where they eventually signed on to work full-time. At Pines, they had joined an ER that was dominated by a clique of beautiful nurses. Pines was known for its attractive nurses and dreamy doctors, but the ER nursing clique outshone the rest. They were a group of nine women who lived in the same town and scheduled frequent social events, including playdates for their children. They invited Molly, who did not have children. They did not invite Juliette, who did. For years, Juliette had tried to gain entry. She often complimented various members of the clique and she frequently mentioned her 7-year-old daughter.
    It didn’t work. They chatted about their get-togethers at the nurses station, right in front of Juliette. They posted on Facebook, arranging outings and rehashing them afterward, even though Juliette could see every exchange, every ebulliently posed photo. They were pleasant enough in the ER, but they never made her feel included. They acted, and looked, like a sorority.
    The clique loved Molly—everyone did—but she didn’t hang out with them. Instead, she was a loyal friend to Juliette. Juliette was 42 years old, and it still hurt to be left out. She wondered if they rejected her because she was six feet two inches tall and overweight. Between her size and her bright auburn bob, she couldn’t have looked more different from the clique. Juliette wasn’t looking for best friends. She just wanted to feel like part of a team. And the fact that Priscilla, the nursing director, was part of the clique made Juliette feel even more excluded.
    Didn’t they already have something in common, something that could supersede the bonds of colleagues in other professions? They were healers, all of them, whose job was to reach people, to connect with them, to make them whole. Why couldn’t they be as compassionate to each other as they were to their patients?
    “You don’t need them. You have me!” Molly would say.
    But not anymore. Molly’s resignation was a blow to Juliette and to the ER in general. Dr. Preston, himself a large personality, had told Juliette that Molly’s leaving was a major loss to the department. Clark, who had light blue eyes and curly white-blond hair, was loud and hilarious, livening up the ER. He was one of the few doctors to insist that nurses call him by his first name, which seemed to soften the medical hierarchy. He could often be found joking around with the nurses, particularly the cute ones. Although he was a risk-taker with his patients, he was also straight- forward, which patients and nurses appreciated.
    Once, a successful high school sprinter had come to the ER with a badly fractured ankle. “He can’t race tomorrow,” Dr. Preston told the boy’s parents, who were obviously overbearing and competitive.
    “What will happen if he races?” the boy’s father asked, prioritizing the sport over his son’s health.
    Dr. Preston smiled. “He’ll lose.”
    Right now there wasn’t time to dwell. In addition to four other patients, Juliette had two rapid heart rate patients who needed constant monitoring. She was also precepting—training—a new nurse, which meant having someone at her heels and explaining everything she did throughout her shift. Juliette enjoyed precepting because she liked teaching and working closely with another nurse, but it did add to the busyness of the day.
    Juliette and her precept, a freckled girl named Noelle, had just transported a complicated stroke patient to the Intensive Care Unit, when Charlene assigned them another extremely critical patient, a 60-year-old man who had fallen in the shower and hit his head. As Juliette and Noelle worked him up,