RN (eBook)

R.J. Austin (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
288 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
9798317805692 (ISBN)

Infos

Jacob finally has the life he has always wanted. Years of hard work have finally paid off. He's an RN. But one night out after work with his friends threatens to destroy everything he has worked so hard for.

RJ Austin is a registered nurse turned author who writes with the raw, unfiltered honesty only someone who's lived through the chaos of hospital floors can bring. Drawing from years of real-life experience in the trenches of healthcare, Austin exposes the dark humor, unspoken truths, and emotional toll of nursing through gritty fiction that cuts deep. His debut novel The RN is an unflinching survival story set in scrubs, where burnout, bureaucracy, and bad behavior collide. When he's not writing or dodging call lights in his sleep, Austin is hard at coming up with his next big idea.

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Jacobs an RN and works at the hospital. On the surface he looks put together, but on the inside he's a complete mess. As he and his friends do, every other weekend, they go to the bar after a grueling work week to unwind. Only on this fateful night Jacobs hard earned perfect life is threatened to be ruined.

Textauszug

Chapter One – Call Lights

So here I am on the floor of the hospital where I’ve worked for four very bittersweet years. The walls are covered in their 100th coat of institutional baby elephant grey paint, and that distinct aroma of bleach, various types of bio-matter, and ammonia lingers in the air. The floors are finely aged with bacteria, and the handrails are smothered in MRSA. The light switches hide microscopic fecal matter because some hospital employees don’t believe in hand hygiene. Anything you touch here has the potential of making you the host of a raging multi-drug-resistant infection. The fluorescent lights have all but burned out and flicker throughout the corridor. The hospital clearly hired Wednesday from The Addams Family as its interior designer.

My name is Jacob Morales and I’m a male nurse. I know what you’re thinking, and no, I am not. In a profession dominated by women, 86 percent to be exact, I’ve learned a few things about the opposite sex. Maybe I’ve been cattier and a better debater lately. Maybe I’ve lost a few nanograms of testosterone. Maybe I’m even a better dresser now, but I still refuse to wear surgical caps, or even worse, joggers. It’s hard enough to accept the fact that there is still this stigma that all male nurses are gay without having everyone second-guess me because of what I’m wearing. I’ll stick to my plain solid colored scrubs, thank you very much. I like being an RN but a lot of people automatically assume I’m less of a man. Like that matters when all I’m trying to do is save your life. I’m often jealous of these roughneck men that are out here working every day with their hands, getting them dirty, breaking their backs; then I remember how much they make. But I still have to prove to myself that I’m more “manly” than them, for some strange reason.

But I really didn’t choose to be a nurse, it chose me. I was called to it by a higher power. Like Gordon Ramsey was called to the kitchen. We’re both the best at what we do, and I have the employee of the month awards to prove it. But this job is way more stressful than any other job I’ve ever had in my life, both mentally and physically. No one takes care of the caretakers. I could be all wrong about this though, and my becoming an RN, could very well just be the universe serving me up a large dose of karma for being an asshole as a young adult. To this day I don’t know how on earth I passed the NCLEX. But I had issues way before my career even began.

I think back.

It was 2007 and I was in my college prerequisite Ethics class. First day. I strategically placed myself in the back of the room, but not for the reasons you might think. I did this so I didn’t interrupt the instructor with the smell of beer seeping out of my pores, while she babbled, and I texted my friends that I would never drink like that again. I do have manners.

The instructor entered the room, and the smell of Old Spice permeated around her round squishy body. She was an older Caucasian woman with a young boy’s salt and pepper haircut. Her credentials went on and on. Ugly people have time for a lengthy education. Master’s degrees, doctorates, bachelor’s degrees. Damn, there are even acronyms for specialties I’ve never even heard of. When I think about my associate's degree, I wish I was ugly. While they were being responsible and studying, I was getting high and smashing any classmate who would open her legs for me.

“Good evening, everyone,” the instructor said to all of us as she placed her beaten-up brown briefcase on the desk and opened it. The briefcase was decorated with peace and love stickers, and a fight inequality decal. She pulled out a stack of papers and sat them down.

I took a night class because there was no way in hell, I was going to be able to get up early after a night of partying hard. Half the middle-aged class mumbled hello back.

“I’m Doctor Coleman. Welcome to Ethics class. Before we jump right into the course curriculum, I want each of you to stand up and tell me, and the rest of the class about yourself. Like what you’re going to school for, your name, or anything else you would like to share with us,” the instructor said with a raspy voice. “I’ll start since this is my class. So once again, my name is Dr. Coleman. I’ve been an educator for 25 years. Not all in this fine establishment. I’ve been with my wife for 15 years and we just adopted a two-month-old Mexican baby. So, our baby has two mommies now.” She paused and scanned the room for any haters. I was too tired to tell her, her kid is going to grow up to be too lazy to hate “We can start on the right.”

One by one my classmates stood up and introduced themselves and their future degrees. It was a melting pot of dreams and aspirations. We had dental hygienist majors, business majors, accounting majors, and so on and so forth. This was it. I thought to myself. No better place to do this than Ethics class. I had spent the last two years of my prerequisite classes lying to myself and others about becoming an RN. I hated to feel this way, but certain family members and friends always picked on me for my choice of profession. As they saw it, nurses were supposed to be young, beautiful women. Candy Stripers didn’t help my plight either. Well, tonight was the night I was going to come clean and tell everyone, “I’m in school to be a nurse!” I didn’t care anymore. And once I spat it out and everyone in class heard I was going to be a nurse, I’d take a deep breath, and the weight of this stigma would be lifted off my shoulders. Two more people before it was my turn to stand up and come clean. Two more people before I got this monkey off my back. Two more people before I was going to tell the truth.

“Hi, everyone. My name is Christine, I’m 19, and I’m in school for nursing,” said the white girl with a soft-spoken voice as she stood up.

Christine was wearing the standard girly girl outfit. A Coach purse hung from her chair and her iPhone screen flashed her Facebook account. She had black yoga pants on with the word PINK written across her backside. Her new BeBe shirt sparkled in the light. She rambled some other stuff and sat down. I don’t recall whether she was hot or not because I was so focused on what I was going to say to the class. Rehearsing what I was going to say in my head over and over. Forget that! Just because she’s what everyone already imagined a nurse to look like, and was becoming a nurse just like me, didn’t mean I was going to back down now. I was still going to stand up proud and declare my future nursing degree. We were not the same person. I’m me.

“Heyyy,” the guy in front of me said, as he floated out of his seat.

He was a middle-aged guy. He had freshly cut blonde hair that was perfect. He was wearing a bright pink shirt that he tucked into his khaki shorts. His gold Cuban necklace glimmered under the fluorescent lights. If I was gay, he’d be my type.

“Where do I start? My name is Dave. I’m 41,” he said, flicking his wrists.

Right about now my stomach started to turn. Like I was about to have the nervous shits. I thought to myself. Please, Dave, tell me you’re in school to be a teacher, or an accountant. Please, anything but nursing. Don’t steal my thunder. I needed this.

“This is my second degree. I was previously in finance and worked as a financial advisor for a major bank. I thought I’d try something new, so now I’m in school to become a nurse also. Just like Christine.” Dave said with very noticeable sugar in his tank, as he tapped Christine on the shoulder.

The girl turned around and smiled big at Dave. “Okay, girl,” she said, and he smiled big, back at her. They gave each other a very girly high-five.

“My partner and I just got back from Japan…”

Dave continued speaking as I zoned out and went back into my head. God, Dave was a great public speaker, I thought to myself as he sat back down. He smelled great and dressed to the nines and here I was, looking like I just rolled out of bed and smelled like an unhoused person. I stood up. “My name is Jacob and I’m in school to be a physical therapist,” I said with a cracking voice and sat back down. I couldn’t help it and chickened out.

But that was a different time and I’m a lot better now. I’m an RN with six years of experience under my belt. Now? I don’t just say I’m a nurse - I dare anyone to question me on it.

I’m what they call a floor, or bedside nurse. Floor nurses are essentially like what the Marines are to the military. We’re on the front lines. The first to go and the last to know. I swear, all nurses need to get hazard pay. We get shit on, from all ends, at every angle, from every direction. We take it in the ass from doctors, patients, PCTs, family members, clergy, physical therapists, pharmacists, housekeepers, dietitians, and even worse... other nurses. We’re “the middlemen”. We get caught in the crossfire of a patient and a lousy doctor who hasn’t explained shit to them. Like why they were just started on another antibiotic or ordered another CT scan.

I just applied for disability myself and told my doctor I have...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 10.6.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror
• ISBN-13: 9798317805692 / 9798317805692