I got a ninety-four.
Chapter Three: The Boards
I passed my boards a year and a half later.
The NCLEX. Seventy-five questions, and if you get them right enough, the computer shuts off early. Mine shut off at seventy-five. I sat there in the testing center in Des Moines staring at a blank screen,
sure I’d failed.
I hadn’t. I got the email two days later. I was in the parking lot of the care center, about to start my last night shift. I read it four times.
Then I sat in my Malibu and cried for twenty minutes.
Then I went inside and worked my shift.
Nobody from my family came to my pinning ceremony.Plan Family Trips
That’s the nursing school graduation. They give you a pin and you say the Nightingale Pledge with a
little candle. It was on a Thursday night in May in the Southwestern auditorium.
