The internal investigation took two weeks. During that time, I worked my shifts and kept my head down. Dana avoided me. She did not speak to me unless she had to. She did not look at me. She acted as if I did not exist.
I did not care. I was busy.
I had started to dig into the restructuring. I had started to talk to the other nurses on the floor. I had started to put together a picture of what was happening at Cauldwell Regional Medical Center.
The hospital was losing money. The board had hired a consulting firm called Mercer and Associates to find ways to cut costs. The consulting firm had recommended closing the step-down unit and moving all the patients to the telemetry floor. It had recommended cutting the night shift to one nurse and one aide. It had recommended laying off ten perc
