"Nurse!"

The door frantically flung open and I heard, “Nurse! Hey nurse! We need you out here, quick.” In the ER, if I heard those words I’d be running like a madwoman, following whomever was responsible for calling for help…..but since I had been on maternity leave at home awaiting the arrival of our second child, instead of immediately running to the scene of the crime I smiled at the sound of the little voice calling me Nurse. My son.

He continued to call out while producing a wave with his arm as if he were a traffic director showing line ups of vehicles which way to detour, “Come on mama nurse! Someone’s hurt.” I waddled down the front stairs in my 9 month pregnant state full well knowing my husband was outside keeping an eye on our son and the neighborhood kids riding their bikes. If something amiss had truly happened it would be him coming to get me for assistance and not my 5 year old.

I overheard my son talking to whomever it was that was apparently in dire straights and in need of nursing attention, “My mom’s a nurse you know. She’ll help you.” I lowered my head and grinned as I opened the door wide to see the great emergency. There stood my son with his little 5 year old neighbor friend who had just fallen off his bike and scraped his knee. “Oh mama,” my boy dramatically lamented, “it was a big crash up and he fell hard!” I looked down and noticed the wound had already been tended to with a big cartoon character bandaid proudly placed over his knee. My husband looked at me and assured me the boy’s mom had already dealt with the situation and the boys were back riding bikes well after the “big crash up” had ended. And yet, somehow my boy deemed my nursing expertise to be The Final Word.

I asked the neighbor boy if he was all right to which he responded with a hearty nod. I then said with a smile on my lips, “Well good then. It looks as though you don’t need a nurse after all.” I glanced at my son and he beamed so proudly at me as if I were the best thing since the invention of Playstation. To him in that moment I was a superhero and I didn’t have to actually DO anything for his little friend, I simply had to give my seal of nursing approval. He was proud of me, my boy and it showed. My heart was puffed up with gladness.

I cannot say that calling for “Nurse” has been an isolated incidence since it seems that once my son understood the concept that I was done school and really WAS a nurse, he could call on me to help anyone within a few door radius to our home. “You need a nurse,” I’ve heard him say, followed by a tromps inside and hauling me out holding my hand to see one of the kids outside that has a sliver, or an old scab they picked or an ‘owie’ from a little scrape. Every time I hear my son holler out for “Nurse,” I smile because it means he knows I am reliable help but also that he admires what I do, what I’ve worked so hard for all those years. And yes, there was the time when we first moved into our house just a few months back and my son graced one of the neighborhood kids with a hockey high stick injury to the eyebrow requiring steristrips/stitches and a trip to the ER. You can click here to read that thrilling story. Yes, I was the nurse then and I will continue to be the on call neighborhood nurse.

You see, we nurses are never NOT nurses. Whether we are at work getting paid to nurse or pulling over at the scene of a car accident or even chopping vegetables for dinner, we are always nurses willing to lend a helping hand. I cannot even begin to count how many times I have received phone calls and emails from family or friends that begin with, “You’re a nurse so you might know the answer to this…….” Every time someone needs nurse-advice from me outside of work I smile. It happens often and I truly find it endearing, honoring even, that people would find me knowledgeable enough to answer their question or assess their hurt child. A nurse is never off duty. Never. I am proud to be a registered nurse and I cannot imagine being called into any other field of work. I make a difference in people’s lives whether I am at work, on the road or at home on maternity leave. For now my season of working within the hospital ER has halted until after this baby joins our family but my pride being an ER nurse never ceases. It’s in my blood now and even post retirement I’ll still be a nurse. I am branded a registered nurse forever and there’s nothing that gives me greater pleasure.