Last Day

June 24, 2011.  3:44 AM. 

I’m clocked out and walking out of the ER.   I’m exhausted; it wasn’t a smart choice to pick a solitary night for my last night.  Better to have been done with everything last week.  Then again, I spent all night in triage.  I think the managers scheduled me out there because they knew I’d just be over being there and that way I’d get in less trouble.  It’s hard to screw up triage when you’ve been out there for four years.   Either someone can wait, or they can’t, and if they can’t, they go to the back.  Otherwise they sit out there and wait for their name to be called and grumble about the person who came in after them getting a room before them.  It’s the nature of the ER waiting room.

Before I leave, I take a walk through the halls where I’ve spent countless hours.  I take in the smell of the department; the smell of the Emergency Department is comforting to me now.  I walk past rooms where I’ve seen people die; I walk by rooms that have some very special memories to me.  My very first code was in SR2.  My very first IV, room 19.  Gale and the ear wax irrigation that turned into a 9 month memory, room 5.  The first time I got to feel like I was the primary nurse as a student, room 18.  I’ve cried, laughed, hugged, and kissed in that department.  I’ve done a lot of patient care, and I’ve wiped a lot of ass.  I hope that I have made an impression on a few of the people I’ve taken care of in this place.  “As you do to one of the least of these My brothers, You do to me.”  I’ve not been the best or the most compassionate or the most competent nurse, but I’ve tried.

I try to realize, to understand the gravity and reality of the situation: these are my last hours of feeling welcome in this ER.  ERs are not static; they are dynamic, and in a year, half of the staff will not know who I am or that I was just a little girl when I started working there.  How I have grown and changed since my very first day on the floor.  It’s hard to bring emotion to leaving; inside, I feel that I am ready to leave.  My heart does not feel attached any more.  It is time.

Now the curtain is drawing on this northside hospital.  The chapter that is the CHN Emergency Department is closed, and a new page is starting, to tell the next part of my story.  Judging from how blessed I have been here, I have no reason to believe that the upcoming pages will hold anything but another set of learning experiences, a new crop of friendships, and a hard but ever-so-worth it mountain to climb.