Forged In The Flames of Oz

Here it is Monday, 5:25 in the morning, and I work night shift tonight.

There was a time when night shift felt almost sacred to me. The hospital halls would settle down, the noise would thin out, and the place would take on a different kind of life. I was not anybody grand back then. I was what they once called a ward clerk and orderly on med-surg. I answered phones, moved patients, watched, listened, and learned the rhythm of a hospital after dark.

From there, I transferred into cardiology, watching heart rhythms. Then I moved into Sleep and Neurology, tucked away in a unit located in the psych area. It was an interesting place, to say the least. I enjoyed the work, and I had time to read. Medical journals. So many medical journals. I was feeding a hunger I did not yet have a name for.

Somewhere around 1983 or 1984, a cardiologist asked if I would be interested in working in a cardiac clinic. There were maybe twelve physicians. My job would be doing stress testing and scanning cardiac Holter monitors. It was good work. It held my interest for about a year.

Then my sister, who was working in the cardiac cath lab, told me they needed someone to monitor and learn to scrub.

I jumped.

After only a few weeks, I was hooked.

The cath lab was the worst best job I ever hated to love. Codes were common. Callbacks were routine. Sleep was optional. Coffee became a tool, not a beverage. We did chest compressions, ran code teams, learned our roles, and learned each other. You got to where you knew what the circulator needed before she spoke.

It was cath lab mental telepathy.

And love it?

I did.

The cardiac cath lab was not like a normal job, where people clock in, clock out, and come and go.

You lived with those people.

Coworker is not even the right word. They became family, but not the soft greeting-card kind. They were siblings, cousins, rivals, protectors, critics, and witnesses. We saw each other tired, angry, brilliant, scared, and running on coffee fumes. We knew who could be trusted when the room went sideways.

And yes, I worked with my sister.

She was brutal. A perfectionist, to say the least. I was not allowed to make mistakes, and I was not allowed to hide when I did not know an answer. If I did not know, I had better say I did not know. Then I had better learn it.

She shaped me, but she did not shape me gently.

There was another woman in the cath lab named Mary Lou. She was a scrub, precise as a blade, and there was none better. She knew her stuff. When Mary Lou entered the room, she was given wide berth. Nobody gave guff to Mary Lou.

She had my admiration.

One day, Mary Lou watched one of those educational moments between my sister and me. Education may be too gentle a word for it. My sister was doing what my sister did, burning the lesson in hot and deep so it would not be forgotten.

Mary Lou watched long enough.

Then she went to my sister and told her, “You need to take it down a little. You are too hard on him.”

The Iron Maiden had come to my rescue.

That tells you something about the dynamics of a cath lab. It was family, but it was not ordinary family. It was a place where people were forged, corrected, challenged, protected, and sometimes rescued by the very people who scared you.

Oz may be the best way to describe it.

Once you stepped through that door, you were not in the regular world anymore.

These people rapidly became family. Even now, here in 2026, we still keep in contact. Many of us continued in the cath lab for more than a decade, and some of us went to different hospital departments, becoming managers, directors, and vice presidents. This alone tells you the forge of hell built excellence.

Every land of Oz has to have a Glinda. Ours was known as “Cath Lab Debbie.” She was the leader, the nurse manager. This Glinda was not soft. She knew her place, she knew her job, and she could do everyone’s job and could fill in at a moment’s notice. Being on call with her was a relief. Debbie could laugh.

In the cath lab, I suppose there was a designated shift, but it meant nothing. Come in at 6 a.m., report at 6:30 a.m., and it was all hands on deck. Depending on your call status, you may still be working in a room, ballooning a cardiac lesion or timing a balloon pump, when the next 6:30 a.m. report time came.

Cath Lab Debbie was right there beside us, working in the trenches. That was raw, skilled leadership.

After my time there was over, around 2000, I stepped back into Sleep full time and dabbled in the cath lab in Denison, Texas.

I say stepped back because I had never fully left it. I had still worked shifts here and there over the years. Sleep medicine had remained in the background, quieter than the cath lab, but still there.

The cath lab had been fire, noise, codes, callbacks, coffee, and adrenaline.

Sleep was different. It was quieter, more cerebral, more like detective work in the dark. But I knew that world too. I had never really put it down.

Then I received word that half the cath lab staff was moving on to a new venture.

They were helping build Lubbock Heart Hospital.

That was all I needed to know.

I headed back home to Lubbock.

For a while, I drove between Denison and Lubbock, caught between the work I had stepped back into and the old world that still had its hooks in me. The truth is, I had not shaken the adrenaline addiction yet.

Honestly, I still have not.

Oz was calling again.

My time there was relatively short, maybe a year.

It had some of the same cast of characters, but I knew it was time to move on fully. I had stepped back into Sleep, and that needed to become my road.

But the cath lab was not done with me yet.

On August 27, 2004, the lights went out.

I had reported for work and was checking a chart. It was 6:48 p.m.

Then nothing.

When I opened my eyes, I could not move.

My hands were tied down. I was staring at the ceiling. A nurse named Pam was practically lying across me, telling me if I did not settle down, she would tie my entire body down.

I needed to cough.

I could not breathe.

Panic hit first.

Then I heard it.

Pissh.

The ventilator.

Beep.

The heart monitor.

Rhonda was standing over me.

Wait.

I’m in Denison, Texas.

What is going on?

I could not move. I could not breathe. I wanted them to let me go. I wanted to know what was happening.

What the hell is going on?

Stop it.

Somehow, I freed my hand and tried to jerk out the intubation tube.

Rhonda looked at me calmly and said, “You have been out a while.”

Then she said the words that turned the room sideways.

“Your heart stopped.”

There is much more to this story, but I will leave a lot of it out.

The hospital where I was could not handle what I needed. My cath lab buddies, physicians I had worked with and trusted, asked for permission to come to Denison, obtain temporary credentials, and treat me there.

Their request was denied.

Now, readers, never do what I am about to tell you.

Never.

What I did could have had catastrophic consequences. I was stubborn. Thick-headed. Maybe scared too, though I would not have used that word at the time.

I left AMA.

Against medical advice.

I was driven to Lubbock Heart Hospital.

You need to understand something. At any moment, my heart could have fibrillated. If it had, it would have been over in seconds. No heroic scene. No dramatic speech. No time for goodbyes. Just seconds, and gone.

But I went.

When I arrived at Lubbock Heart Hospital, they were there.

Deann, the CNO.

Kelly, the cath lab manager.

Old friends.

The old world.

They received me, and I do not know how else to say it.

They took me home.

They repaired my heart. They placed a cardiac defibrillator unit in my chest. They did what that place had been built to do, and the same hands, minds, and hearts that had once worked beside me now worked over me.

After that, there are fragments.

Notes.

Whispers.

Machines.

Faces.

The word that remains is this:

Rebuild.

This is where it began.

Not all at once. Not with a grand declaration. Not with a plan written neatly on paper.

It began with baby steps.

I reached out for something, though I did not know what I was reaching for. I was searching for the first moments, the first small pieces of myself that might still be available to me.

The word Rebuild was there, but it was still more whisper than instruction.

The fork was not in view yet.

Not yet.

But it was coming.