My parents say they always knew I would become a nurse. Maybe because they're both nurses. I don't think anyone else who knew me growing up thought this. More likely, people thought I'd become an inventor or a mad scientist, or else be working for a government think tank or as a college professor or writing novels. Who knows what either of us will be doing thirty years from now? They might yet be right. Today I am a nurse.

     I entered the nursing field after the tech bubble popped in 2001. I was among 3000 people laid off from my company, looking to pay my bills. Many of my peers took jobs at Kinko's or Starbucks or waiting tables. I waited tables for a while during this time too, though realized I needed to reinvent myself to keep up with where the jobs were. Nursing was a career in demand that paid well and didn't require more than a couple more years of schooling. I liked the idea of being one of the good guys too. So many of my peers in tech just wanted to make money, but I cared about helping people. You might say it's in my blood.

     Nursing school was how I imagine boot camp to be. The instructors tore us down, made us frantic and rebuilt us. It was an amazing amount of information and experiences. My very first patient ever died within five minutes of me introducing myself, then vomited in my mouth while I gave him CPR... but lived. I saw people struggling with illness- chronic and acute- and what that does to one's sense of self. I took care of a baby who had his arm broken during an episode of abuse, and confronted the abuser when he tried to take the baby from the hospital. There is a saying that all nursing is psych nursing, and this was my experience. I enjoyed many of the different rotations through school, but it wasn't until Psych that I found my calling.

     My fellow classmates were nervous the first day we entered the adult psychiatric unit. We were warned it could be violent. Many of the patients there were suicidal or homicidal. Some saw and heard hallucinations. A few were self-mutilators. We were cautioned not to enter any patient's rooms alone, to never let a patient get between us and the door, and to be on guard at all times. We were all assigned patients to interview. I had two. The first was a Paranoid Schizophrenic who had been there four days and refused to talk to anyone. The other was a woman who was actively hallucinating and easily agitated. She had a history of requiring restraints and emergency injectable medication.

     "He probably won't talk to you," the charge nurse told me, "but he's watching TV in the dayroom over there." She pointed to a room with about 30 chairs, a few tables and a television. He was the only one in the room. Live footage of the war in Iraq was on the television. It occurred to me I wouldn't get far approaching him and asking questions. That's what everyone else had done and it hadn't worked for them. I decided to try something different. I sat down on the far side of the room and started watching TV. 

     A few minutes in, I caught my patient staring at me. I made a silly face at him and returned my attention to the the television. A moment later, I noticed him looking again. I stuck my tongue out and went back to watching the war on TV. He asked, "Do you work here or are you a patient?"

     "Shush, please," I said. "I'm trying to watch this. This is history here." Then, I added, "If you want to talk, please wait until a commercial comes on, okay?"

     Now we both watched the TV, at least until the break. That's when my patient turned to me and said, "The commercial's on." We became fast friends.

     Before the end of that rotation, I'd been offered not only a job, but a scholarship. University Hospital paid for my education in return for a two-year commitment. I was hired and trained as charge nurse of the very unit I'd done my rotation on.