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might be
repulsed by the smell of hospitals—a mixture of sweat, urine, vomit, and bleach—but
to me it was home . My first couple of weeks would be spent shadowing a
senior Trauma RN while learning the protocols and layout of Dallas Northwest
Hospital. Due to my age, I was still considered “green” in the eyes of any
Emergency Staff team. To me that simply meant that saving lives could not be my
only purpose; I also needed to prove myself.
    My “initiation” into
the ER in Phoenix was so far beyond anything I had ever seen or experienced
prior. I had done some work as a tech in Urgent Care during my first couple
years of nursing school. That was probably the only reason my resume and
application were accepted so quickly. That and the fact they were desperate for
help.
    The supply and demand
for trauma nurses was well matched with its position as second highest trauma
city in the country. They didn’t seem to mind that I had been a CNA in Labor
and Delivery the year prior to graduating, nor did they question my drastic
switch from wanting to specialize in birthing babies, to stabbings, broken
skulls and overdoses.
    That first week in
Phoenix had been mind-blowing, and my fear so intense that I was often
paralyzed by it. A trauma nurse could be wrapping a broken arm one minute and
the next be assisting in pulling a lead pipe out of someone's chest.
    What happened in the
Emergency Rooms of large metropolitan cities were the nightmares your
nightmares had while they slept. People who came through Emergency lived to
tell their stories of horror. Those that didn’t leave often died after living
out their worst-case scenario. That’s what Trauma was, a world of worst-case
scenarios.
    After a month of
cowering behind the more experienced nurses and pretending to be busy with
paperwork, IV’s, and administrative tasks, I was called out of hiding. A bus
full of high school football players had crashed on the interstate. All hands
were needed, including mine, “green” as they were.
    I had watched the
trauma nurses work quickly and effortlessly, setting shoulders, bandaging open
wounds and applying burn towels to the students who had been closest to the
engine when it caught fire. All were busy when my patient was rushed in with a
severely mangled leg and arm. He was unconscious and receiving CPR by the EMT.
I ran to meet them, shaky and uncertain. But then it happened, a rush of
adrenaline like I had never experienced before. It was all-consuming.
    The EMT who was using
the manual resuscitation bag pointed and yelled for me to do chest compressions
until we got to the defibrillator. In an instant I was the breath for his lungs
as we raced to bay one. Dr. Bradley met us there as the EMT went over his
vitals and injuries.
    I lifted the paddles
and charged them to life, positioning them on his chest. Feeling the power and
the terror of death that hung in the balance, I stood with him at fate’s door.
And just like that, he had a heart beat again.
    “Good job today,
Green,” Dr. Bradley had said later that day.
    “It’s Tori—and thanks!”
I corrected, smiling at her.
    “Ha! I’ll tell you
what, ‘ it’s Tori ’, I’ll call you that after you’ve survived six months
here…until then, it’s Green,” she said.
    Though it wasn’t as
dramatic as pulling a lead pipe from a chest, I had helped a boy come back to
life…and I was hooked. The fear would still come, but I no longer hid from the
unknown. The adrenaline rushes were more addictive than anything I had ever
encountered, and I needed and wanted more.
    When adrenaline pumps,
every other thought and emotion takes a step back. You are a slave to it;
willing to do whatever it asks, no matter what the cost.
    And if that cost threatened to make me forget
who I was...then I would be a slave to it forever.

FIVE
    Noon to midnight was a
surprisingly good shift for a newbie in Emergency. It was one that I suspected
was not entirely left to chance, but I couldn't let