I flopped onto the couch after work and turned on a rerun of my favorite comedy, Scrubs. It was strange how much I liked the show considering I hated hospitals.
I’d developed a fear of them after my mother died when I was young. But somehow an episode of Scrubs always took my mind off my troubles.
I focused on the sitcom and tried to forget about my day at the garden center. Landscaping sounded like a great idea when I started, and my dad ran the business with a partner. But I just didn’t wake up in the morning excited to build another elaborate patio or aerate another lawn. I was coasting.
“I’m not sure this is the right job for you,” my dad’s partner, Kelly, had told me over lunch that day.
“You’re a hard worker, and you’re good at this. But as your friend I have to say you don’t seem happy here.”
Kelly was right. I had to admit it.
“There’s a career out there waiting for you,” he said. “Look around online, try different things. When you find the job that’s right for you, you’ll know it.”
During the next commercial, I moved to my computer. Okay, God, I thought, lead me in the right direction. “Local jobs,” I typed into my search engine. The first thing that popped up was at a hospital. Not for me, I thought. I kept looking.
Orderly, hospital administrator—hospital jobs really seemed to be in demand. One even sounded pretty cool: X-ray technologist. But I couldn’t work in a hospital. No way.
I went back to my Scrubs rerun. These guys made working in a hospital look like fun. But this was television, not reality. They’re not going to show the truth about hospitals in a comedy. But I knew the truth.
How many times as a kid had I been woken up in the middle of the night by ambulance lights outside our house? Even at 11 years old I knew that any time I visited Mom in the hospital, it could be the last time I’d ever see her alive.
After she died I even avoided going to the doctor. I certainly wasn’t going to go willingly into a hospital. I’ll just have to keep looking, I thought. Be open, like Kelly said.
Over the next few weeks I continued my internet search. Invariably, the same jobs popped up. The X-ray tech job took two years to get certified and did not require a college degree, which I didn’t have. It would have been perfect: If only it wasn’t in a hospital.
One night after work I went over to Dad’s house for dinner with my aunt Ann. She’d been a registered nurse and now worked as a hospital administrator. We talked about my job search.
“X-ray technologist sounds like a really interesting job,” I confessed. “But I could never work where you work. I can’t work in a place where people go to die.”
Ann looked surprised at my description.
“People do die in hospitals,” she agreed. “But there’s so much more to a hospital. They’re places of healing. Hospitals are where cancer patients learn they’re in remission. Where parents hold their babies for the first time. Where people are treated and often cured. That’s what my job means to me. I love being a part of that.”
I hadn’t thought about it that way before, but I guessed she had a point. When I got home I sat down to another episode of Scrubs. This time, instead of just laughing at the jokes, I noticed how the doctors were helping the patients.
I thought about all the doctors and nurses that had been assigned to my mother. How they had wanted so desperately to save her life. How from time to time they had at least been able to offer her some comfort or relief from her pain. How much helping Mom must have meant to those doctors and nurses when they clocked out and went home at night. How much those angels must have meant to Mom.
Ann and I talked a lot over the coming weeks. The more she told me about the day-to-day workings of a hospital, and her happy interactions with patients, the more her positive point of view made sense. Was it possible that a hospital career was actually for me? There was only one way to find out.
I spent the next two years earning my X-ray technologist certification. I’d never enjoyed being a student more. The field fascinated me. But the true test would come on my first day of work at Littleton Adventist Hospital.
One of my first patients was an elderly woman in a wheelchair. Her family was so thankful for the care she was given. I helped them maneuver her into the car and waved them off, almost like they were my own family.
Somehow, the last place I ever thought I wanted to be was just where I belonged. Kelly, Aunt Ann, those Scrubs reruns, even Mom—many angels had led me to a career I would never have considered on my own.
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