“‘Summit Hospital, first in the country and first for you.’ Ya, right.” Katie mumbles under her breath while clipping her badge onto her scrubs in the breakroom of the emergency department. Katie was a 20-something year old new graduate nurse at Summit, and to the nursing teams surprise, she was already one of the best nurses working in the ER. Being the best didn’t matter to her, and only having been a nurse at this hospital for 8 months, Katie was already tired of the shenanigans that went on in the ER.

The rest of the evening nursing staff starts filing into the breakroom for pre-shift meeting. Ashley, a late 30- something seasoned nurse who’s been working at summit for over ten years, who’s everyone’s favorite charge nurse, walks in, “Hey everyone, unfortunately, we had a call out today so I need everyone to work together to give these patients the care they deserve.”

“I guess that means you’ll actually be out on the floor helping us tonight then right?” Katie sneers at Ashley rolling her eyes. The other nurses laugh, knowing damn well Ashley won’t be helping a single soul. “If you guys work as a team, you’ll all be fine.” Ashley leaves the breakroom to go hide in her office for the majority of the shift.

“I don’t know why I’m even shocked anymore at the lack of support we get from management.” Megan, another 20- something nurse that’s been working at Summit for about 2 years. Katie and Megan are the strongest nurses on the unit, they knew they could handle whatever comes their way but they always have an ounce of hope, that for once, management would help. Being a team player is all they pushed around there anyway, the hypocrisy of it all.

As the team walked on onto the unit, an overall sense of dread filled each and every nurse working that night. Every room in the emergency department was filled, and triage had a three hour wait.

“I’ve been waiting for two hours to be seen!” A disgruntled man could be heard banging on the glass window out in triage. “That guy got here way after me and they just took him back there! My back is killing me, I need a doctor now!” Pointing to a patient that’s being brought back to the ER with his face dripping in blood.

“Sir, people are seen in order based on severity.” The triage nurse struggles to calmly explain the process.

“Well! My back pain is severe! Doesn’t that count for anything!?” Yelling, as he turns around to go sit back down in the waiting room.

“Well, tonight is going to a fun isn’t it? Is there a full moon tonight or something?” Katie jokes to Megan. “More like or something! I swear it’s like this almost every shift now.. short staffed, impatient people in triage, one trauma after another, and there’s always one tech-“ Megan gets cut off by Daniel, the barely out of highschool patient care technician on the unit. “Megan.. hey.. I know I just got here but-“ “Let me guess, you don’t feel well and you want to leave? We only have two techs on the floor tonight, including you and short a nurse! .. whatever, go find Ashley and tell her you’re leaving then.” David scurries away to attempt to find the charge nurse. Katie and Megan give each other a look and roll their eyes. “If he can even find Ashley, otherwise I guess he’s stuck here!” Katie laughs, “Alright, better go get report and see what we’re in for tonight.”

Katie sits down at the desk in the nurses station next to the dayshift nurse who is clearly fed up and ready to run out the door, they quickly discuss each patient.

“Alright, so we have contestant number one, with a toothache.. okay. One respiratory illness.. one head trauma, one psych.. broken toe.. and last but not least, back pain. Let’s get this show on the road.” Katie hurries over to her patient’s rooms to greet herself and do a quick assessment on each patient but is interrupted by loud yelling of one of her patients.

“Where is my pain medicine! I’ve been waiting hours and my back is killing me!” Katie recognized this guys voice from the waiting room. Katie straightens up her back and marches into his room. “Sir, we are waiting for the doctor to come see you, he is with someone else at the moment.” “I don’t care! I need it now! Go do something about it!” He screams at her. Katie sighs and leaves the room knowing the doctor will be there shortly.

As she starts to go over to the patient with head trauma, she hears a scream come from one of her other patient’s rooms. The patient has the care tech cornered in the room, Katie quickly calls for a code strong for security to help descalate the situation and then contacts the doctor for approval for a rapid tranquilizer. Once security gets to the room, Katie runs to grab the injection from pharmacy. “This is not what i need right now! Ugh, someone just put me under so i can go home!”

She heads back over to her aggravated patient, gets to the room, quickly prepares the medication for administration. Just as she looks up, the patient is standing right in front of her, lifts up his arm, makes a fist and BAM! Punches Katie right in the right orbital and she falls to the ground. She lays there for a minute, groaning, in tears and holding her head. Megan runs into the room, “Where did security go!?” Glaring at the patient who is now sitting on the hospital bed, she notices the medication filled syringe and reaches for it, then immediately injects it into the patient. The tech who had been a sitter for this patient, helps Megan apply restraints.

“Ugh, can I just go home now?” Katie whimpers still sitting on the ground. “Let’s get you some ice first and have a doctor check you out.” Megan walks her over to a chair in the nurses station.

“This is what I get, I said I wanted to be knocked out so I could go home.” She said slightly laughing. Megan shakes her head then goes to grab Ashley to inform her of what’s going on and hopefully get Ashley to come help out on the floor since now they’re down, yet another nurse. “Katie was punched in the face by a patient, she needs to be seen and then needs to go home.”

“Katie was punched? How did that happen? I’ll go talk to her now.” Ashely walks over to the nurses station finding Katie all black and blue by her eye. “How did this happen? What could you have done differently in this situation? Now we need to do an incident report.” Ashley crosses her arms. “Ya, it’s totally my fault I got punched in the face. Maybe if I had more help, that wouldn’t have happened!” Katie starts to get up but immediately sits back down. “Woah, I’m super dizzy..” “Alright I’m calling the doctor now to get you a ct scan, you might have a concussion, as well.” Megan looks at her with concern. “I hate to say it but chances are, the doctor will want you admitted.”

The doctor agrees to admitting Katie and give an order for a CT scan stat. “Room 6 just opened up so, after the scan, we’ll bring you back there to monitor you until it’s safe for you to go home.” Katie immediately gets picked up by transportation and is brought down to get her scan.

After the ct scan, Katie is brought back to a room. The doctor soon comes in confirming a concussion and a fracture to her right orbital. “Katie, I’m sorry but we’ll be admitting you and moving you upstairs to monitor you for a night or two.” Disappointed, Katie shakes her head in agreement to staying. “I should’ve called out today.”