Nursing in Virginia asked three nurses to recount experiences caring for patients. Included here are stories from Nancy Martin, Robin Lee and Karen Henson.

Nancy Martin, director of the trauma program at VCU Medical Center, coordinated care for a local victim of the Beltway snipers. Dr. Joseph P. Ornato (center), chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine, and Dr. Rao Ivatury of the Department of Surgery, were key figures in the victim's recovery. PHOTO COURTESY OF VCU CREATIVE SERVICES

Nancy Martin, RN, trauma program director for the VCU Medical Center in Richmond, coordinated care for a victim of John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo. Muhammad and Malvo, popularly known as the Beltway snipers, shot randomly chosen victims in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

The 37-year-old victim Martin treated was shot in Ashland on Oct. 19, 2002, as he left an area restaurant with his wife.

It was around 8:30 on a Saturday night. It hadn't been busy in the emergency room. People were trickling in. We'd taken care of an elderly woman who had a devastating spinal cord injury, and I'd gone downstairs to check on her. That's when we heard that we were about to receive a victim with a gunshot wound to the abdomen.

When the ambulance arrived, the Hanover County Rescue Squad said they thought he might be a victim of the sniper. I asked why, and they said it was based on what the victim and the victim's wife had said.

The victim was conscious and talking, but we had to get him to the operating room quickly. We gave him an IV and an X-ray, and five minutes later we took him upstairs to the OR. For our shooting victims, that's an average time.

We follow a standard procedure for shooting victims. First, the OR stops the victim's bleeding. Then the patient goes to the intensive care unit for massive resuscitation. Our ICU specializes in that care. The patient is stabilized in the ICU and then taken back upstairs for surgery. We usually leave the patient's abdomen open as we transport him between the departments.

As the trauma program director, I coordinate care for the patient. So I left the OR to make sure the ICU was ready. As I walked down the hall, somebody stopped me and asked how the sniper victim was doing. I asked her how she knew it was the sniper. She said, "It's all over the news."

CNN was broadcasting the story live. I panicked because the victim's wife was downstairs, and the media was starting to descend on the hospital. I asked the chaplain to take her somewhere quiet. Then I told her what was going on with her husband.

The amazing thing about this woman was how calm she was.

The couple had been driving south on I-95, heading to their home in Florida, when her husband saw a sign for a Ponderosa Steakhouse. He said, "I haven't eaten at a Ponderosa in so long. Why don't we eat there?" And he was shot there.

I went upstairs to the OR to check on the patient, and Dr. Rao Ivatury said the bullet had done a lot of damage. I went back downstairs and explained the situation to the victim's wife, and she was as calm as could be. That was her demeanor the whole time. It was an incredibly frightening time for the city of Richmond, and she was a calming force within the chaos.

During the shooting victim's stay in our hospital, I participated in a press conference about his care. His wife had asked me to thank the Richmond community for its tremendous support. It was the first press conference I'd ever done, and I didn't realize it would be national press until I walked outside. I felt bad not answering all the press' questions, but we had to protect the patient's privacy. And we were worried about the snipers. For all we knew, they were still in the area.

The shooting victim was in the ICU for two weeks. He was a healthy guy, and he progressed very well. But the high-powered bullet did a lot of damage to his abdominal organs. He was discharged after three weeks.

I followed the patient throughout his entire stay, making sure he had what he needed. As I do with every trauma patient we see, I also followed up with him after his discharge. The patient and his wife have come back to Richmond several times, and he stops by the hospital each time. They also send Christmas cards.

This was the most publicized case I've ever had. We have so many trauma patients that come through, and you pull for every one of them. But when you get to know the family, it's more difficult. I also wanted him to pull through because I didn't want the sniper to put another notch in his belt because he'd gotten somebody else. It was a senseless act.

Robin Lee, RN PHOTO COURTESY OF U.Va. HEALTH SYSTEMS

Robin Lee, RN, began her career as a nurse in July 2007. She works in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at the University of Virginia Health System in Charlottesville. The Professional Nursing Staff Organization acknowledged her initiative organizing a blood drive with its Beginning Practitioner of the Year award.

Last December, we had a 13-year-old boy stay in our pediatric intensive care unit. He had heart disease, and doctors had installed an external pump to help his heart work. Unfortunately, blood clots formed in the device. The patient also experienced excessive bleeding where the tubes from the pump entered his chest.

He wasn't doing well.

Two nurses cared for him around the clock. One of us would hang the blood products and do the lab work, and the other would do everything else. It was nonstop.

Over the course of a week of my caring for him, the patient used 100 units of blood and blood products.

He was using most of U.Va.'s blood supply. U.Va. holds a blood drive every two weeks, but typically only five to 10 people donate blood at the events. Soon, U.Va. ran out of my patient's blood type, and we had to get blood from the Richmond chapter of the Virginia Blood Services.

Nationally, blood was in short supply. So I decided to sponsor a blood drive in honor of my patient. It took me three days to organize it. I spent a lot of time on the phone, trying to get people to support it. I called the office of the Virginia Blood Services, and it gave me tremendous support.

We held the blood drive on Dec. 31, so I was worried that it would be hard to find people to donate. But 30 people showed up to give blood. It was a tremendous turnout. The patient's parents and many of his cousins donated blood, too, along with U.Va.'s medical staff. We got more than 30 units of blood for the U.Va. blood bank that day.

The patient's parents were grateful for our efforts.

Karen Henson, department director of inpatient oncology. PHOTO COURTESY OF LEWIS GALE MEDICAL CENTER

Karen Henson is department director of inpatient oncology at Lewis-Gale Medical Center in Salem.

While making rounds in July I had the pleasure of being introduced to a special patient and his wife. The patient, who had an aggressive form of stomach cancer, was getting ready to celebrate his 31st wedding anniversary with his wife the next day. Because they would be in the hospital, the staff and I decided to throw the couple an anniversary party. We brought in a cake and a card, and we sang them a song. We also gave them an azalea they could take home and plant. We joked that they were taking a little piece of us home with them.

On the patient's second visit back with us, we found out that they had renewed their wedding vows. They shared pictures, and we were touched to see that the azalea we had given them had been planted and that it was close by where they renewed their vows.

I had many conversations with this patient and his wife during their visits, but it was something his wife said that touched my heart and the hearts of my staff members. She said that she did not pray for God to heal her husband because that would be selfish. Instead, she said, she prayed for God to use his illness to touch people and for God's glory. The unconditional love they felt for each other was such a testimony.

By the time the patient made his final visit with us in August, the couple had become part of our family. We listened to the many stories they told. We laughed with them and cried with them. And they taught many of us important life lessons without even realizing it. There were moments when I watched them look into each other's eyes in such a way that I knew they were communicating their feelings without saying any words. I thought of my own husband and family, and I wondered whether we could share these same types of stories or embrace one another without even touching or saying any words.

Some of my last conversations with the couple were not always easy, but they had to be spoken. Deciding which measures to take, when to call loved ones to come, when to take him home.

It was during one of these conversations that I had the opportunity to tell his wife that even though the battle with cancer was being lost, God had answered her prayer. I felt God had sent this couple to us as a gentle reminder of why we are here. Out of all the many blessings we have, being an oncology nurse and getting the opportunity to meet such wonderful people were blessings for me.

In this fast-paced world we live in, I believe that we do not stop and take the time to cherish all that we have. It takes cancer or the fear of loss to make us realize that we have to slow down and not only take time to embrace our loved ones but stop long enough to actually feel the embrace. My pastor has said many times that we are born into this world terminal. I now understand that and realize that we all need to live like we are terminal.

The day of discharge was bittersweet. The patient was to go home for comfort care, but before he left, the nursing staff from the oncology office, the infusion area and our unit came to say their goodbyes and give lots of hugs. We delayed the transport team about an hour, but nobody complained.

The patient had been a park ranger, and his wife got permission for the ambulance to drive home across the Blue Ridge Parkway. The ambulance stopped at the Great Valley overlook, and the transport team opened the back doors so he could take one last look.

He died just a few days later. More than 900 people attended his funeral, including me and other staff here on 6 West. We have been able to keep in touch with his wife and walk with her along the path she is on. She never complains, and she has never asked why.

All of our oncology patients touch our hearts in some way. As health-care providers, we want to touch and heal our patients. But sometimes, it is the patients who touch and heal us.