A revealing guide to a nursing career written by esteemed reporter Sonny Kleinfield and based on the real-life experiences of the celebrated emergency room nurses of New York’s Lenox Hill Hospital—required reading for anyone considering a path to this profession. Becoming a Nurse takes you behind the scenes to find out what it’s really like, and what it really takes, to become a nurse. Acclaimed former New York Times reporter Sonny Kleinfield shadows veteran nurse Hadassah Lampert of Lenox Hill Hospital in New York to show how this in-demand job becomes a reality. Known for her mastery of technical skills and her heartfelt compassion for her patients, Lampert embodies the best of nursing. Go inside a hectic ER as veteran nurses work around the clock to treat incoming patients in a dazzling display of focus, skill, and bravery. Learn about their paths to the top of their field, from nursing school and clinical rotations to on-the-job realities like dealing with trauma and death. Gain insight about how this high-stakes job is actually practiced at the highest levels. As a nurse, expect the unexpected. "We all have some idea of what those front-line workers do, but to really enter their life-and-death realm of medical expertise and ready compassion, read Becoming a Nurse . Some chapters are flat-out gripping; others are deeply moving." — Washington Post "Gracefully structured, beautifully written and packed with useful information, telling details and drama." —Star Tribune Sonny Kleinfield is a former New York Times staff reporter and author of eight nonfiction books. He has written for Harper’s Magazine , The Atlantic , Esquire , Rolling Stone , and The New York Times . Chapter 1 1 He arrived in a wheelchair. Paramedics hustled him in from the ambulance bay, steering him into the sharp light. His face was serious. His eyes jumped left and right, taking in the unfamiliar setting. There was a steadfast procession of such arrivals swerving into the hospital, thickening as the day lengthened. With this man, something was wrong, but it wasn’t clear how wrong. All visits to this fast-motion environment were stories with yet unknown endings. Nurses were coming and going. Doctors were coming and going. Noise was high: the staccato of beeping heart monitors; alarms ringing; phones chirping; the clank of wheeled beds being moved. The grumble and moaning of people and murmurs of misery were catapulting off the walls. And that vivid smell. The pungent disinfectant hospital smell, day in and day out, always the same. Few places stir up as much drama as rooms like this. Walking in, you feel an electric nervousness that never passes, the nervous flutter of sickness. Patients, with their omnivorous needs, seek its alchemy. The emergency room. A woman came over to inspect the man in the wheelchair. Her name was Hadassah Lampert. She was thirty-three and a registered nurse, and this was Lenox Hill Hospital, New York City. Every day, Lampert met strangers in pain, and their pain became her concern. Now this man’s breathing, his oxygen level, his blood pressure, his heartbeat, the sensation in his face and his limbs, whether he was agreeable or surly, hungry or full, whether, in fact, he lived or died—they were her concern. He had a trimmed beard on an angular face. Short, dusky hair. Hound dog eyes. Sinewy. He was forty-nine. He wore a baseball cap and had his sunglasses perched on the brim. While she took his vitals, Lampert noticed that he was listing to the left. He told her he had been on the way to work—a blue-collar job—when he felt dizzy and collapsed on the subway. “Okay, you’re going to come over here and lie on the stretcher,” she told him. Helping him transfer over, she noticed that his gait was uneven. She focused hard on him and considered her options. She called a stroke code. A stroke code was a speeded-up regimen, an auto racing pit stop. A retinue—two nurses, a technician, an ER doctor, a neurologist, a nurse practitioner from neurology, someone from pharmacy—quickly assembled. Lampert economically filled in one of the doctors on the particulars. The doctor asked the man, “Were you having difficulty walking?” “Yes.” “What does it feel like?” “Like things are moving.” The doctor asked him to touch his fingers together. “Can you go with your finger and touch your nose.” A little off. “Can you touch the tip of your nose?” “Look at my nose. How many fingers do you see?” The patient held up two. “How many fingers?” the doctor asked. One. “How many?” Two. “What month are we in?” “September.” “How old are you?” “Forty-nine.” Lampert escorted him to get a CAT scan of his brain. She and a male nurse hoisted him onto the exam table. After the table slid into the big doughnut hole, Lampert and the others positioned themselves around the screen in the control room, the space limited, and stared stonily at the interior of the man’s head. No discernab