Squinting at her name badge, I asked, “GN. What’s that?” Six months into my internship, I’d seen hundreds of students – medical, nursing, anesthesia – parade through 5L, the cramped labor and delivery ward at LA County Hospital.
She smiled. “Graduate Nurse,” she answered, her blue eyes locked on mine.
“That’s what, a graduate student or something?”
Fiddling with a tube, she drew blood into a thin glass rod, preparing to spin a hematocrit. Now glistening red on the inside, she paired it with another at the opposite end of the centrifuge, then closed the cover and hit the button. The familiar whir of the machine starting up softened the sounds in the cramped lab.
“No.” That smile again. “No, I’m waiting to pass my boards.”
“Boards?”
“Nursing. You can’t be an ‘RN’ until you pass them. Even if you’ve finished school.” The machine spun down, the blood cells now separated from the serum. Grabbing the capillary tubes, she placed first one, then the other, into the protractor-like crit reader. “Thirty-two,” she announced. “Pretty good. Your turn.”
I began the process on my blood tubes, expecting her to return to her patient.
“RN,” she said.
“Uhh?” I asked, snapping one of the little tubes before I could fill it with blood I’d drawn from the grand multip who’d arrived, “Red Blanket”, from the ER minutes before.
“We say it means ‘Real Nurse.’ They won’t let me work much on my own until I pass the boards, get my license.”
I looked over. She’d stopped mid-exit, half-turned back towards me, another smile building on her lips, her eyes steady at my gaze.
“Where?”
“What?”
“Where did you go to school?”
“St. Louis. St. Louis University. They had a special one year program if you already had a bachelor’s.” She hesitated, unsure if she should share. “I want to be a midwife. A Nurse Midwife.”
I finally got the machine spinning again. “So, is that where you’re from?” Stray wisps of golden hair tinged with California highlights dangled out from her blue surgical bonnet.
“No, Santa Barbara. I went to UC Santa Barbara. I grew up here in LA.” She looked out the window, then went on, “My sister was at nursing school, told me all about her OB rotation. ‘There’s midwives,’ she said. All at once, I knew.”
“Knew what?”
“Knew that’s what I wanted. To be. So I looked around, to see how fast I could get there. First, nursing school then, midwifery, a master’s degree. Would take forever, I thought. So when I heard about this special program in St. Louis, I jumped. Took a few classes at Santa Monica College – I was an anthropology major at UCSB, didn’t have enough science – and they let me in!”
Fully facing me now, her excitement jetted out between us. Caught up in the wave, I smiled back.
“The other doctors around here, when I tell them, they almost laugh at me. Like my father – he’s a neurosurgeon – they say, ‘What for? Why don’t you just become a doctor, instead of taking work away from us.” Her eyes challenged me. “What do you think, about midwives? Would you want to work with one?”At that moment, I’d do anything to spend more time with her. “Yeah, that’s a great idea, midwives. They can take care of the normal, the natural things for pregnant women, leave the problems for doctors. I’d work with a midwife.”