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 m