Chapter Text
First day of clinicals and Lightburst has no idea what to do. She’s not even sure how she got this far when she mostly plays games on her laptop during class and barely studies for her tests. Luckily for her, her clinical group has 6 other people. Unfortunately, they all got placed in groups of 2 except her since she was the last one on the instructor’s list.
“Oh of course this happens to me. First I get placed in a clinical site on the days I don't want, then I get assigned morning shifts and now I’m in a group alone!” She thinks to herself as she heads over to find the nurse she was assigned to. “Now where is the nursing station?” Turns out, she was going the complete opposite direction and accidentally bumped into a nurse when turning the corner.
She falls from the impact since the nurse was running before they bumped into her. “I’m so sorry! Here, let me help you.” Lightburst looks up to the nurse and sees him holding out his hand for her to hold. She takes his hand and stands up before dusting off her scrubs. “It’s alright, probably my fault. Anyways, do you know where the nursing station is?” She asks the nurse. The nurse feels bad for bumping into her so he gladly offers to take her there. “Yeah, follow me. I was heading there in the first place to meet the new nursing students.” He smiles joyfully.
As they’re both walking there, Lightburst is a bit curious about this nurse. He seems a bit chipper and doesn’t seem to look chronically tired like how everyone makes them seem. Lightburst taps his shoulder, “Hey, uh, I didn’t catch your name earlier.” The nurse looks over at her, looking pretty happy that someone asked for his name. “I’m Niko but you can call me N for short. What’s yours, if you don't mind me asking?”
“My name’s Lightburst. How come you go by-” “Wait, Lightburst? You’re the student I got assigned to!” Lightburst just blinks, not exactly sure what to say next.
“Good job on giving a first bad impression by bumping into him”, one part of her brain tells her.
“Technically he bumped into us. He was running after all”, the other part tells her
“Shut up, I’m zoning out again. Although, I should really give you guys a name or something” Lightburst thinks to herself
N looks at her, kinda worried since she went silent after he told her he’s her assigned nurse. “You good there? Did I say something wrong?” Lightburst snaps out of her thoughts and looks up at him. “Sorry about that, you didn’t do anything wrong. Just caught up in my thoughts.” She doesn’t want to say more about it since she thinks he’ll think of her as weird.
“Oh, if you say so.”
Once they get to the nursing station, N is given the morning report for the patients he’s in charge of for the day and Lightburst just stands to the side, not knowing what to do.
“So now what? You just gonna stand there looking useless” Part of her brain tells her. Since she always seems to be berating her, she decides to call her Nightmare
“Well what else am I supposed to do? It’s my first day and I’m not given any instructions yet.” Lightburst shoots back
“You do realize that you’re going to have to figure things out yourself, right? You won’t be getting instructions that often anymore and before you start complaining about how you don’t like that, you have to get used to it now.” That other part of her brain tells her. She decides to call this part of her thoughts Nightlight. “Remember, you can’t fake it till you make it anymore.”
That sentence sent chills through Lightburst’s spine. Nightlight was right and she knew it. Lightburst decides to tune back into the morning report. The night shift nurse finishes reporting everything to N and leaves. N turns back around to Lightburst and hands her the report. “Seems like we have a patient who’s dealing with Gastroenteritis this morning. You ready?”
Lightburst nods, although she has no idea what Gastroenteritis is. As they walk to the patient’s room, Lightburst decides to ask N something. “N, why did you become a nurse?”
“That was very straightforward of you” Nightmare taunts
N thinks about the question a bit before he answers. “Well, I love doing anything but I wanted to feel useful so I chose to become a nurse. I always wanna try my best and that’s how I got here.”
The way he spoke about it made Lightburst feel that he was genuinely doing his job because he wants to help other people, not because of the money. That made her feel a bit at ease for some reason. Maybe because she had similar reasons as to why she’s studying for that. Before they arrive at the patient’s room, N goes into what looks like a storage room. He comes out and hands Lightburst a gown, gloves, protective eyewear, a mask and shoe covers.
“What’s all of this for?” Lightburst asks N, a little confused as to why she needed more than just the mask and gloves.
“It’s your PPE, you know, your Personal Protective Equipment. Didn’t they teach you that we need that when a patient has Gastroenteritis?” N slightly tilts his head to the side as he’s a little confused as to why Lightburst is confused.
Lightburst avoids eye contact as she looks to the side, a bit nervous that maybe he noticed that she has no idea what that is. “Well… My professor may be implied that at some point of the lecture but it wasn’t directly mentioned soooo, yeah”
“What did I say about not faking it? You know you weren’t even paying attention.” Nightlight mentions.
N decides to ask Lightburst later about what she actually knows so he can see where he can help her. Once they get to the patient's room, N and Lightburst put on their PPE and N enters the room first.
“Good morning Ms., I’m N and this is Lightburst” He motions towards Lightburst and she gives a small wave. “Is it ok if I can check your wristband for identification purposes?” The lady nods as N walks over to her and checks her wristband. “Can you tell me your name and date of birth, please?”
“Lola Smith, March 28th, 2001”
Lightburst is standing at the foot of the bed, not exactly sure what she can and can’t touch, seeing as how this patient is in her own room.
“Probably done in order to avoid spreading the infection” She thinks to herself
Meanwhile, N is checking the patient’s vital signs to make sure that she doesn’t get a low blood pressure reading (Hypotension) or a high heart rate reading (Tachycardia). He notices that she does have a low grade fever when checking her temperature but it’s not alarmingly high. “Ok ma’am, it seems like your vital signs are all in check.” He says cheerfully, in hopes to make her feel slightly better. “I’m going to check your abdomen if that’s ok with you.”
“It’s fine by me but please be gentle. It hurts a bit.” Lola mentions to N. Lightburst writes that down on the paper N gave her earlier since they might need to report that later. N checks Lola’s abdominal area and notices how it seems slightly bloated. N doesn’t palpate the abdomen since Lola mentioned that she feels a bit of pain.
“Your stomach is still a bit bloated but not as much as when you were admitted, which is a good thing. Thank you for your time Ms. Lola. I’ll come back later with your meds.” N says cheerfully, making Lola smile.
N and Lightburst go towards the door and before they exit, they take off their PPE and put it in the correct bin that’s right next to the door. Once they dispose of it correctly, they leave the room and sanitize their hands. They walk towards the break room as N needs to talk to Lightburst about something. Lightburst doesn’t say anything as she feels like she was just a bystander.
“How much you wanna bet that you’re going to get a failing grade this semester with that grand performance you had in there” Nightmare teases.
“To be fair, you could have at least helped with vital signs. You do know how to do that” Nightlight mentions.
“Sorry but I just froze in there. It’s an actual patient I’m dealing with now! Not some dummy who doesn’t respond back and can’t feel pain!” Lightburst tries to reason with herself in her mind.
N can tell that she seems to be on autopilot mode at the moment and worries a bit. Should he have let her try things out? She is learning after all and having hands-on experience is why the students are there in the first place. Once they get to the break room, they sit across from each other at an empty table. Lightburst just looks down, not daring to look at N as she feels like a disappointment. N sighs before speaking.
“Lightburst, do you know what Gastroenteritis is?”
Lightburst stays silent for a couple seconds before responding “No. No I don’t”
“Hey, don’t feel bad about it.” He says in a caring tone “Not everyone starts off knowing everything. I’ve been where you are now. So, would you like me to explain to you what Gastroenteritis is?”
Lightburst slightly looks up at N. “Yeah, that’d be nice”
“Well first, let's start off with what you know”
Lightburst is a bit nervous since she doesn’t know much. “Uh, well, I know that Gastro means something relating to the stomach and that Itis is inflammation.” she says with uncertainty
“That’s right!” He cheers. That makes Lightburst feel better and brings a smile to her face. “How about Enter? Not enter as in entering a room but enter from the word Gastroenteritis”
Lightburst thinks for a bit but nothing comes up. “I’m not sure.”
N smiles a bit, happy that Lightburst was able to admit that she doesn’t know it. “Enter means pertaining to or of the intestines. So, would you like to guess what the word Gastroenteritis means now?”
“So if Gastro is stomach, Enter is intestine and Itis means inflammation… Does that mean that Gastroenteritis means inflammation of the stomach and intestines?”
“Ding, ding, ding! We got a winner!” He says happily, causing Lightburst to giggle a bit and feel better. “Gastroenteritis is when the stomach and intestines are irritated or inflamed. It’s usually a short term illness that’s triggered by an infection. Said infection can be caused by a virus, bacteria, bacterial toxins, parasites, somethings particular chemicals and drugs.”
“Wait, so wouldn’t that also be like food poisoning or the stomach flu?” She asks, connecting the dots from the similarities.
“Woah, look who’s getting the hang of it quickly.” N’s reinforcement makes Lightburst feel better about herself. N then pulls out a whiteboard out of thin air, which catches Lightburst off guard. “Where did you get that-”
“With Gastroenteritis, some of the symptoms that patients usually get are headaches, anorexia, a low grade fever, and abdominal discomfort like how we saw with our patient. They can also get diarrhea.” N draws quick little doodles on the whiteboard to give Lightburst a visual of how that’ll look like. He isn’t much of an artist but Lightburst was able to get the gist of what he was drawing.
“Is the anorexia caused because it’s painful for them to digest their food since their stomach and intestine is inflamed?”
“That’s right. It’s like having to walk on a sprained ankle. You can still walk but it hurts to put pressure on it.” He draws another doodle. “Since Gastroenteritis is infectious and can spread easily, we need to isolate the patient and keep everything there as clean as possible. That's why we also had to wear our PPE.. We also have to monitor their vitals signs, check for dehydration, make sure they’re safe and give them fluid and electrolyte replacement.”
“Is the fluid and electrolyte replacement and checking for dehydration done because the patient is losing fluids from vomiting and diarrhea?” Lightburst gets excited to see if her answer is right as seen by her leaning over the table.
“Exactly! Because of that, one of the medications we give them is an Anti-Diarrheal, like Imodium (loperamide), to decrease the stooling, or pooping yk. We also give them Antispasmodics, like Bentyl (dicyclomine), to relieve intestinal spasms and the pain that comes with it. The last medication we give is actually usually given to other patients who have nausea as well. It’s an Antiemetic, like Zofran (ondansetron), which is the most commonly used to decrease nausea. We can also use Compazine (prochlorperazine) and Reglan (metoclopramide) but only if it’s prescribed to them. We can’t change their medication, only give the medication that’s ordered by the doctor. We can also give antibiotics but only if it’s not a virus. If so, we just let it run its course.”
Lightburst was starry eyed and thankful that she got assigned to being in N’s group, no longer bothered by the fact that she’s the only one in the group. N can tell that what he did helped her feel better about her understanding of the subject and was glad that he was able to teach her in a way she can grasp the subject.
They get back to work and their day continues on until the students have to go back to school. Lightburst thanks N and waves goodbye, saying that she’ll be back later on in the week. N waves goodbye to her and then goes back to his shift. Maybe this could be the start of a good friendship and learning opportunity.