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

“But you have to give report to ICU.”
    “Andrea can do that,” Juliette said, frustrated. Charlene should never have assigned her three ICU-bound patients simultaneously when each of them required a nurse’s undivided attention.
    Andrea scowled at Juliette.
    “Never mind. I’ll do it,” Juliette said. She wiped down the phone with an alcohol swab before picking it up.
    Later, Juliette found Charlene in the break room. “Why didn’t you give that patient to Andrea?” she asked.
    “Because it was fine for you and your preceptee to take him. You guys could handle it together,” Charlene said. “And it was wrong of you to tell Andrea to call report.”
    Juliette looked Charlene in the eye. “Sometimes I feel like Andrea does a lot more talking than working, and I took it out on her.”
    “I understand,” Charlene said, matter-of-factly. “I do that in my work assignments sometimes.”
    “Sounds like you’re admitting to favoritism,” Juliette said.
    Charlene rolled her eyes.
    The next day, Charlene assigned Juliette four seriously ill Cardiac Care Unit–bound patients, while other ER nurses had only the relatively low-maintenance run-of-the-mill ER cases, none of whom would be admitted to the CCU.
    Juliette was a first-rate nurse, and could handle difficult patient loads. But every ICU and CCU patient needed a nurse who could spend time with them one-on-one. On a personal level, Juliette could ignore that Charlene and some other coworkers didn’t like her. She knew that stressful working conditions affected how she spoke to people. However, she worried about how tensions and exclusions, power trips, and freezing out among the nurses could impinge on patient care. Perhaps that was why the clique’s snubs bothered her so much. They weren’t folding sweaters here. Juliette took great pride in being a hardworking nurse who cared intensely for her patients.
    Oh, who was she kidding? Of course she took the rejections personally. Between her weight and family issues, she had been socially insecure her entire life. Maybe what bothered her most was that people could lower her self-esteem in an arena in which she felt confident that she was good at what she did.

SAM   CITYCENTER HOSPITAL, August
    Just don’t kill anyone
, Sam thought, taking deep breaths as the charge nurse distributed assignments.
You’ll be okay. Just don’t kill anyone.
    She could see herself in a mirror across the hall, her arms self- consciously wrapped around her ample chest. Petite and slender with long, dark hair usually tied back in a ponytail, Sam had large gray eyes framed by delicate wire-rimmed glasses. She was sure her normally olive skin had a green tint this morning.
    Since she had awakened at 4:30 a.m., 24-year-old Sam had been fighting the nausea that accompanied her nerves on her first official day as a nurse. It wasn’t that she was inexperienced. She had interned here at Citycenter Hospital for three months after graduating from nursing school. Before nursing school, she was an ER technician at Pines Memorial. But this was different. Now she would be held personally responsible for potentially fragile lives.
    Sam sighed with relief when the charge nurse assigned her to Zone 3. The Citycenter ER was divided into a minor care area for stitches and breaks, and three treatment zones: Zone 1 for the sickest patients, Zone 3 for the least sick. She would be less likely to accidentally kill a patient who wasn’t too critical to begin with. As the charge nurse wrapped up the meeting, Sam mentally ran through the phone numbers she had memorized. New nurses were given cards with phone numbers for the charge nurse, lab, radiology, computer help desk, and tube station, a pneumatic labyrinth of tubes that sent specimens and paperwork through the walls to various departments of the hospital. Sam had learned as an intern that if the staff believed a nurse didn’t know what she was doing, they gave her a hard time. She had worked her