We were a team. Always had been. Always would be. We defended each other, protected each other—from management, from nurse bullies, from the cruel ICU doctors who thought they ruled the world. Back in the day, we had our own kind of “therapy sessions”—long talks over coffee, unloading the weight of twelve-hour shifts, of lives saved and lost, of the battles fought in the trenches of critical care. But life had gotten busy, and we hadn’t had one of those talks in months.
It was Gail’s birthday. That was reason enough to meet.
Gail and I had worked together for years. She was a tried-and-true ICU nurse before making the switch to the coronary care unit. Now, we were both retired, but the bond remained. It was time to catch up, to celebrate, to reminisce. To talk about family, grandkids, and the unforgettable moments from the ICU—some terrifying, some triumphant.
I chose a semi-elegant restaurant for brunch, a place I had always loved after my night shifts. Back then, after thirteen hours in the ICU, I was starving—physically, mentally, emotionally. This place had been my refuge. My peace. My solitude.
Gail and I sat down, and the conversation flowed effortlessly, as it always did. We talked, we laughed, we remembered. And somewhere along the way, we caught the attention of our waiter.
He lingered near the table, listening in, curiosity written all over his face.
“You’re both nurses?” he finally asked.
“ICU and coronary care,” Gail confirmed.
He hesitated, then admitted, “I don’t know anything about medicine… and I don’t mean to intrude, but—”
“Pull up a chair,” I interrupted, grinning.
His eyes lit up with something—excitement, maybe even relief. He slid into the seat beside us and asked, “Why did you like ICU nursing?”
I smirked. “Can I cuss?”
He laughed. “Of course! You won’t offend me.”
I exhaled slowly, meeting his gaze. “I loved ICU because… I loved how the body could get so f**ed up*—”
His eyebrows shot up, but he was hooked.
“Your lungs. Your heart. Your brain, kidneys, pancreas, liver—every single system can fail, all at once,” I continued. “And then, piece by piece, you put that person back together again. Organ by organ. There’s something incredible about solving that puzzle—about taking a body that’s completely out of sync and restoring it, like a perfect clock. It’s a mystery. A challenge. A fight for life.”
He nodded, fascinated.
Then, after a pause, he confessed, “I don’t know what I want to do with my life. I’m twenty-eight. I feel… lost.”
Gail and I exchanged a glance. We’d heard this before—from younger nurses, from med students, from people standing at a crossroads.
“You’ve got time,” I told him. “If you’re even thinking about medicine, start small. Take a class at a community college. Try EMT training, paramedic school. Look into nursing, respiratory therapy, radiology tech. Even if you don’t become a doctor, there are a million ways to be in health care.”
“The sky’s the limit,” Gail added.
We finished our brunch after an hour and a half, but it felt different this time. Special.
This young man—this stranger—had been drawn into our world, even for just a moment. Maybe, just maybe, we had sparked something in him. A curiosity. A hunger. A sense of possibility in a field that had given us so much.
As we stood to leave, he smiled at us, and in his eyes, there was something new. A spark.
I could only hope it would grow.
Debbie Moore-Black is a nurse who blogs at Do Not Resuscitate.
