Trying to make sense of a surreal world.

As a social worker, I followed others into dark places. As a writer, I reached for light, writing stories with happy endings, never letting my characters suffer too much. In other words, I wrote fiction. It didn’t keep the darkness out. Now I’ve turned to my own story.

Most of my career was spent in the ER of a regional hospital.

In my memoir, Surprised by Nothing: Surviving the World of Worst-Case Scenarios, I travel through this surreal landscape, arriving as a twenty-nine year old who fainted twice just at the idea of blood, and departing as a fifty-seven year old unable to cry and beset with anxiety. I’d spent my entire middle adulthood working in an ER. I wanted to know how that changed me and whether I could change back.

 

Working in an ER was never my plan, but I took the job because I needed the health insurance.

I kept the job because being part of a team that saves lives is addicting, and because I already had the essential survival skills–detachment, compartmentalization, and a driving need to feel that I made a tangible difference. But I also had a problem–what my mother calls an “over-active imagination.” Imagination fueled my empathy. I could imagine the stories of others and how it would feel to live in those stories. Imagination was my super power until it became a liability, saturating my mind with images and fears. I suppressed my imagination so I could keep my job and raise my children under the shadow of a stark discovery: the world is randomly terrifying.

I show how social work taught me to not let your helping get in the way of your helping; what unconditional regard looks like beyond the textbook; and why detachment, though essential, can leave you dry.

As an outsider to the medical profession, I bring the reader behind-the-scenes to see how the ER is ground zero for our healthcare system. I reveal the quirks of the overworked, highly skilled staff, who like their humor on the dark side. There are pranks, superstitions, and unexpected kindnesses.

This could be a story about…

our health care system  

how I learned that “emergency” is relative

how I hid my fear of blood

how I raised children in the shadow of seeing every horrible thing possible

how imagination is both my super power and my kryptonite

how I lost the ability to cry

how listening always helps

why superstition works

how I used detachment as a survival skill

how I decided to care for a living so I wouldn’t have to care so much on my own time

how I no longer believe that things happen for a reason

how most people are more decent then you should ever expect

It is a story about all of that.

I discover that my imagination is the path back to connection, leading me to a world where once again I can be surprised.

Find available feature scripts and teleplays on the Available Scripts tab. contact: kathrynk88@gmail.com

Sacrifice card from Despair.com; photographs by Kathryn Kyker at: Hunting Island, SC; Seattle, WA; and Athens, GA.