...One long day began with a 7 hour surgery of an newborn infant. Dawn carefully and skillfully brought order to chaos as she organized hundreds of instruments and disposable supplies. With precision and deftness of hand she constantly adjusts to the ever changing condition of the patient. Knowing the surgeon and the procedure like the back of her hand, little is said as they move through each step of the case. The critically ill child is finally taken off bypass, made whole again and given life.

Once the infant is transferred back to the PICU, Dawn heads home only to to be called back several hours later for a mobile ECMO run. She preps the supplies, medications and team as they load up into the ambulance and head off to a distant city. 10 hours later, they successfully return with their patient.

Once back, Dawn thinks of the infant from the day before and takes a detour to the PICU. She stands outside the room and with a calm presence assesses the infants condition, the family is awake and she introduces herself to the parents. She speaks in kind words, tells them how strong their child was during the operation, and offers encouragement for the long road ahead. They will never know that she has not slept, that she helped save another's life that night, and that she didn't need to make the extra trip to RCH to check up, but she did.