Page 1 of Night Shift

Chapter one

Out of nowhere, an ambulance came barreling around the corner with lights flashing and sirens blaring, just as I was about to turn into the parking lot at St. John’s Medical Center. I jerked the wheel, narrowly avoiding a collision. Shaken but unscathed, I pulled into the parking lot on the corner of 19th and J, then cut the engine.

A cool rain fell relentlessly against my windshield while I sat in my car across from the entrance to the emergency department. Streetlights fought against the darkness to illuminate the area, creating halos of light in the misty air.

When I’d come here for my formal interview a few weeks ago, finding parking had been a nightmare. Thankfully, tonight, the staff lot had plenty of open spaces. As I braced myself for the night shift, the knot in my stomach tightened. I hated to admit it, but I was a bit nervous. Probably not for the reasons I should have been, but nevertheless, I was. And this wasn’t the typical new-job jitters or worry about being late. No, instead, my mind fixated on something far more mundane—the vulnerability of my car in this dimly lit, unprotected parking lot.

There was no security guard in sight. This car wasn’t much, but it was all I had. Dealing with a break-in or having to fix a shattered window was the last thing I needed. I’d purchased this used GTI thanks to the money I saved on tuition after receiving a scholarship for nursing school. It had taken nearly all the funds I’d saved from working at the hospital too, but I loved the little black beauty—stick shift and all. This ratty thing had given me freedom for the first time…freedom to move away from Aberdeen. Strangely enough, I was more concerned about my car getting vandalized than what awaited me across the street.

I was fifteen minutes early and had already seen three ambulances pull up to the emergency bay. It was clear that today was our turn to take on the city’s worst cases. In Tacoma, St. John’s and Tacoma General, both Level II Trauma Centers, alternated handling these intense days. By the look of it, my first shift was going to start off with a bang.

As I sat there in my car gathering the courage to head into the hospital, I reminded myself that the high-speed pace and medical challenges of the ED were, in fact, what had drawn me toward this choice.

I glanced down at the dashboard. The clock read 17:49. My shift would start at 18:00. A thrill of excitement surged through me while butterflies fluttered chaotically in my stomach. “You asked for this,” I whispered, taking a deep breath to rally my courage as I removed my keys from the ignition. I double-checked that I had my essentials before I exited the car: stethoscope, trauma shears, at least four pens, my lunch—which hopefully I would get a chance to eat—and my wit. Just as I stepped out of the car and locked it, another ambulance screamed into the bay. “Oh boy,” I muttered under my breath, “this is going to be a shit show.”

My fingers instinctively wrapped around the end of my braided ponytail that kept my long, curly red hair in check as I crossed the street. The style was practical, no-nonsense—much like the rest of my life.

This was it, the big leagues. A chance to prove myself as a newly minted CEN. I had always been the type to take charge, to push through hardships and challenges, and tonight would be no different. The constant whirl of activity, the sirens, the urgency—it was all here, and I was ready for it. Ready to face the chaos, ready to make a difference.

With a deep breath, I pushed open the doors to the emergency department, stepping into a world where every second counted, where my skills and my decisions could save lives.

When I badged in to the break room, a sea of unknown faces stared back at me, each displaying the weariness typical of this job. I glanced around, taking in the unfamiliar surroundings of my new workplace. The shift was just about to begin, and everyone already looked like they didn’t want to be here. Welcome to the night shift.

The charge nurse entered, clipboard in hand, a clear signal that the pre-shift briefing was about to start. “Let’s make this quick. We’re swamped because of the wreck at 509 and Pacific,” she said.

Board rounds were a familiar routine from my time in Aberdeen, but here, in this larger hospital, the stakes seemed higher. As I focused on what the charge nurse was sharing with us, nervous energy gripped me. The rapid arrival of ambulances moments earlier indicated that many daunting tasks lay ahead this evening.

After finishing her briefing, the charge nurse paused briefly and said, “Everyone, meet our new staff nurse.” She gestured in my direction. “This is Samantha Sheridan, joining us from the Emergency Department at Harbor Regional Health in…Aberdeen, was it?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied with a smile on my face, forcing myself to remember that I was the new kid on the block.

A twinge of awkwardness made my cheeks heat. The skeptical, almost pitying looks everyone now gave me were irritating. I could almost hear their thoughts: “This girl is going to be eaten alive at a hospital like this.” Well, I was more than ready to prove them wrong. I couldn’t wait to show them I belonged here.

The charge nurse moved on, outlining the night’s current caseload and doling out our assignments. She reminded us it was trauma day. When the briefing wrapped up, a surge of adrenaline shot up my spine, and I headed toward the triage area. I remembered what Steven, the hiring manager, had warned me about night shifts at St. John’s. “Expect to hit the ground running from the get-go,” he had said. And boy, he hadn’t been exaggerating.

When I rounded the corner, I found the scene was mostly as I’d expected. Nurses were attending to the first three ambulances, their actions routine and measured. But it was the frantic activity surrounding the last ambulance that seized my attention. As fate would have it, inside that ambulance was the very patient I had been assigned to.

The shouting seemed to be getting louder, and with each step I took, the commotion increased. I tried to spot the nurse who was supposed to give me the shift report, but wasn’t sure which one she was. The charge nurse had told me to look for Bethany Raines, saying she’d have dark brown hair tied back in a ponytail and that she was a dead ringer for Alice Braga. She was probably right in the thick of things. I needed to get closer to see if I could spot her.

Before I could reach the triage area, additional medical staff flooded into the area, security officers in tow. This combination signaled trouble. One of my new coworkers was holding a little black case—that wasn’t good. At my old hospital, those black cases held locking restraints for combative patients. I wasn’t a fan of using them, but it beat getting punched or kicked. If they were already having to resort to restrictive measures like this, it was going to be a long, hard shift. The tension in the air was almost tangible, and my heart rate accelerated as they moved the patient into a trauma room. This was the reality of a Level II Trauma Center—unpredictable, unyielding. And this was my new normal.

I steeled myself. “All right, Sam, no backing down now,” I muttered under my breath. My past, riddled with its own kind of chaos and pain, had prepared me for this moment. The hardworking, determined part of me was raring to go, even as a wave of apprehension tightened my stomach at facing this new level of encounter.

From the threshold of the doorway, I watched the rapid-fire activity unfolding. The room resonated with the sounds of shrill, rhythmic beeping from monitors and the scuffling squeaks of shoes moving across the vinyl floor. Six determined hospital staff encircled the patient, who was thrashing wildly on the gurney, his movements punctuated by violent, angry screams. One nurse pressed her hands firmly around his neck, trying to hold his cervical spine in alignment. Beside her, two techs applied pressure on his wrists and shoulders. At the same time, two security officers held down his legs, applying pressure right above the knees and feet. Another officer put locking restraints around the patient’s wrists and then moved to secure his ankles.

One of the security officers hissed, “Do you want the chest strap, Doc?”

The doctor, who had just brushed past me as if I wasn’t there, responded with crisp self-assurance, “Hold off on it until we can get a good look at his torso for any visible trauma.”

Finally, I spotted the nurse who I would be relieving. I headed toward her. Even with her mask on, she did, indeed, resemble Alice Braga.

The patient reeked of alcohol. I stopped dead in my tracks as the smell sent a shudder through my body. The familiar scent triggered terrible memories of the only other person I had ever known to have this kind of pungency—my father. For the smell to be this strong, the man must have had a lot to drink. I shook my head, snapping myself back to the situation at hand. As soon as I stepped up next to the nurse, the doctor barked an order at me.

“We need a CT scan, stat, but there’s no way this patient is going to hold still, so we’ll need a sedative to knock him out.” He pointed a finger at me as if I had some Ativan or propofol just sitting in my pocket.

My eyebrows shot up, and the pharmacist standing by the door said, “Don’t worry about the medication. I got that. You go put the order in for the scan.”

After placing the order, I returned to the nurse at the head of the bed, and she began to update me on the patient.

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