It was quiet in labor and delivery. As soon as I walked onto the fifth floor of Inner City Hospital and saw other nurses standing around the desk chatting, instead of moving in and out of rooms, I figured that some of us would be moving to other departments that needed help.
I dipped into the bathroom to empty my bladder before I started my day. Well, my night. I had unfortunately drawn the 5 p.m. to 5 a.m. shift that week. Working that shift was never really easy, but it was particularly difficult on a Friday night. I washed my hands and was about to step out of the bathroom when a text came through on my phone.
Rikkie:
Girl, these YNs got the streets hot as hell out here. E.R. is getting slammed. Y’all slow? Cuz they bout to send out that S.O.S. for help.
As the temperatures rose outside, so did the violence in the streets of the city. It was like people didn’t know how to control their anger or their beefs when it was uncomfortably hot outside.
Me:
That must be what has these babies trying to stay inside their mothers’ wombs tonight. Because we ain’t got no births happening up here. I’ll let the charge nurse know I’m volunteering to come down.
Rikkia was my nurse bestie. We met in college in the nursing program. We hit it off and eventually became roommates. After graduating and passing the NCLEX, I got hired at Inner City Hospital and told her to apply. We both started in the ER, but I eventually posted out. Rikkia thrived on the nonstop action and quick turnover of the emergency room dynamic. I wanted something different. I ended up in labor and delivery, and I loved it. But I didn’t mind giving up for one shift for the opportunity to hang out with my girl. Besides, if any department could make a late-night shift go by quickly, it was the ER.
She met me by triage. “You ready to do this?” she asked as the wail of an incoming ambulance siren broke through the noise in the department.
“Yep.”
The night went on, business as usual. I was in and out of bays. Not to mention, I was running both here and there, checking on patients. The hours were flying by, because there was never any downtime. It was well after midnight by the time Rikkia and I caught up with each other to take our lunch breaks.
When we left the cafeteria and returned to the ER, we walked into chaos. It was different from L & D, but I wasn’t too bothered, because that was the nature of the emergency department. Not only that, but staying busy helped me see the light at the end of the tunnel for the shift. Just a few more hours and I would be off for three glorious days in a row. One day would, of course, be spent catching up on sleep. The other two would be spent indulging in self-care.
While I was consumed with my personal thoughts, Rikkia was checking in with the charge nurse. She ended the conversation and rejoined me. “It’s about to get really hot in here. Some type of gang war, drug war . . . I don’t know, is happening on the East Side. They brought in three gunshot victims while we were at lunch. Two more are on the way.” No sooner than those words left her mouth did the sound of an ambulance siren break through the already loud sounds of the ER. “Let’s go,” she told me.
Ambulances arrived, and everything was crazy for about an hour. Staff scurried between bays, while friends and family members of the victims were loud and disoriented in the waiting room. Of course, I wasn’t as familiar with the ER as I was with L & D, but I managed to complete the tasks requested of me.
When the ER finally seemed to return to its normal busyness, Rikkia caught up with me. “Come with me to restock this crash cart,” she told me. I walked beside her to the supply room. “So, I was in there while they were working on one of the gunshot victims.” She turned to face me. “I overheard the conversation.Felix Vargas—you know, the son of Vegas Vargas . . . he was involved. I think he was one of the shooters, or it was on his command.”
I stopped walking because everybody in the city knew that Vegas Vargas was the biggest street dude in town. The fact that his son was involved meant that things were about to get very serious in the city as the summer went on.
“Yeah.” She nodded her head. “It’s about to get real in the field. He—” She stopped talking as we heard the first sound. It kind of sounded like a firework. To the untrained ear, it sounded like a firework. But I was from the country. I had grown up around that sound. I knew exactly what the report of a gun sounded like.
What followed was a few more loud pops. Both Rikkia and I stood there . . . frozen. I wasn’t sure what was going through her mind, but my mind was cataloguing the sound, trying to gauge which direction it was coming from. But then the pops were coming loud, close, and rapidly. Rikkia moved into action before I did. She grabbed my arm and yanked. Like a rag doll, I was half dragged down the hallway, then shoved into a tiny closet.
Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!The gunshots were coming fast and furiously. Above the volume of the gunfire, you could make out the sounds of human shrieks, yelling, and the scraping of furniture against the concrete flooring.
In the darkness of the closet, I held on tight to Rikkia’s hand. My heart pounded in my chest so loudly that I was sure my friend could hear it. My breathing seemed loud enough to alert the shooters of our hiding place. I wanted to close my eyes so badly, but I didn’t have that luxury. Even though the closet was pitch black, and I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face, I knew I needed to keep my eyes open. If a beam of light came through from the door being cracked open, I wanted to be readyto react. I tried to put together an escape plan in my mind, but the sound of the gunfire kept making my thoughts scatter.
After what seemed like hours but was probably only minutes, an eerie quiet took over. Neither Rikkia nor I moved a muscle. Then there was the sound of sirens in the distance. Still, we stayed silent and unmoving. Loud radios crackled outside the closet. I figured it was the police, but still, we didn’t move.
Finally, the door came open. Rikkia sucked in an audible breath. My heart stopped, then my brain processed the regulation uniform hat on the officer’s head. From there, I took in her mocha brown skin and the look of sincere concern on her face.
“Do you need help standing up?” she asked. I hadn’t even realized that we had slid to the floor. I didn’t trust my voice to speak, so I shook my head.
We were saved. But the carnage of the ER was like a war zone. I was a trained nurse. I dealt with life and death on the daily. But no training in the world . . . nothing on Earth could’ve prepared me for the wreckage I saw that night once I left the confines of the supply closet.
What was I saved for? Because this ain’t life, I thought to myself as I sat in Dr. White’s office with my letter of resignation in hand.
One year after the shooting, I was barely holding things together. I worked at a small clinic as a nurse for an ob-gyn. I still wasn’t sleeping at night. I was still having nightmares. My concentration was always slipping. I’d given up trying to finishthe midwifery course I’d enrolled in, because I couldn’t even focus.
Then there was the fatigue, the forgetfulness, and the mood swings. But the hardest thing to deal with was the fear. It gripped me, and almost anything could set it off—a siren, a loud noise, somebody standing in front of or blocking an exit.
After the doctor had what had to have been the one hundredth “performance meeting” with me since I’d been hired, I decided to resign my position. I had accepted the facts. As much as I loved being a nurse, I wasn’t sure I was effective at it anymore. Working in the medical environment wasn’t helping my anxiety at all. Everything was too familiar and reminded me of that night.
I was struggling and fighting to stay in the city, for what? I was hundreds of miles away from home with no loved ones or support system close by. Even Rikkia had moved back to her hometown after deciding the anxiety of the city was too much for her to bear. I had people at home who loved me, who would support me through the journey of healing, but I was choosing not to be with them.
I was seeing a therapist. She gave me strategies, and I tried them all. But sometimes, you needed more than just therapy. You needed home.
