[ monitor beeping ]
You just need a bit of a tune up and then we'll send you home, okay?
We gotta make sure you're feeling party ready for your birthday.
[ intense music buildup ]
However long I'm here, I want to have a positive impact on this world,
so that it would be a better place for whoever's behind me and whoever's beside me.
I was finishing up nursing school
and there was a recession going on.
A lot of hospitals were not hiring new grads
because they were so expensive to train.
So it was becoming apparent that there weren't really going to be job options available to me.
My friends in nursing school were in the Navy.
They were like, "Why don't you just join the Navy?"
I'm like, "No way, I'm not joining the Navy."
But, I'm very inquisitive
so I decided to do some research.
And I really couldn't find any
outstanding reason of why I shouldn't at least just try it.
Even if I don't like it,
I'll just do four years and then the economy will have hopefully picked up by then and I can get out and
have this great resume.
But, it has taken me on this path that is not like anything I'd ever anticipated.
So I had been on my first assignment for about a year,
and at the time there was a
large surge of casualties coming in from Iraq and Afghanistan.
So they took a couple of us and assigned us to this Wounded Warrior unit.
It was a completely different skill set than anything that I had learned so far.
I'm a brand new nurse. I'm brand new to the Navy.
Now I'm taking care of these guys.
Everyday you're faced with somebody's traumatic life circumstances.
As much as they want to be like, "No I'm good, I'm ready to go back to the battlefields."
There's really a lot more going on.
Those days were very scary.
I just went home and cried.
These patients have a lot of scary stuff going on.
But, they managed to bounce back.
I realized how resilient they were.
That is from a mental standpoint.
That is separate from their physical injuries.
It was very humbling.
I just kinda said, "You know what? If they can keep going, then I can keep going."
Here I am nine years later.
I've gone to every corner of the globe,
deploying overseas to Africa, doing flight nurse training in Okinawa, Japan.
All of these different experiences have been pretty incredible.
Even in the first four years I had
so much going on and so much learning and so much training that I was growing all these skills and
you know, it really tee'd me up for having a fantastic career.
Now I work at the intensive care unit in Balboa which is
one of our largest intensive care units in military medicine.
For the patients and the families this is
one of the scariest times that they have probably ever encountered.
You know, I hate to say it but the intensive care unit is kind of the last effort that you have to save somebody's life.
[PATIENT:] I want to go home.
Alright. We'll talk to the doctors and see what the plan is today, okay?
Alright.
I think regardless of when patients come into our care and how long they stay with us,
Whether they get better,
Or, you know, maybe they come to us at the end of their life
and we help them and the families pass on with dignity and comfort.
Whatever is next, it's really an honor to be part of that.
Being a nurse in the Navy,
what you give and what you take away is going to be different than probably any other job.
I've been able to go out and experience things that
people that have lived decades beyond me have not been able to experience.
I'm able to find meaning in how my small, little contribution fits into this bigger tapestry.
It makes it very easy to realize
I have really lived out my life and my years and gotten the most out of it.
My name is Ashley Flynn,
and I'm a Lieutenant in the United States Navy Nurse Corps.
[ somber music playing ]