‘Nurse is iconic’: Medical professional comes to the rescue when employee has to call in late for work from a hospital bed

A young Liverpudlian woman woke up in the hospital after a night out gone wrong and had to call her manager to inform her she’d be late. Thankfully, she had a fabulous nurse on her side.

“If you think your bank holiday was bad, I this to my manager at 7 am,” 24-year-old Tess Ruby captioned the video she initially sent her boss and then posted on TikTok. In it, she apologizes and explains she will work overtime, but needs an hour to be there, to which her champion of a nurse responds “give her two hours.”

“Omg that’s my bestie that nurse,” one viewer commented, with others adding “That nurse is iconic” and “We need more nurses like this.” The older man may have stolen the spotlight for a bit, but most people were registering how mad it is that we, as a society, have to worry about work during a situation like that.

“Nothin says working class like saying ‘I’ll come and do overtime after this’,” said one of Tess’s friends, and she was in complete agreement. “A little hospitalization isn’t causing me to lose out on double pay,” the girl half-joked. As another commentator put it: “It’s funny but so sad that we even have to do this.”

This then led to multiple people sharing their horror stories of when work and medical emergencies converge. “My manager was ringing the ward daily to see when I’d be out,” TikTok user Sheena shared, while Sprout said her manager would have hit her with “I just wish you could have given me a bit more notice” and “make sure you get a medical certificate.” “I once was in hospital with severe tonsillitis and my manager said I was letting the team down by phoning in sick,” was Harriett’s experience. Jeez.

There was some hope left, however, via a gem of a boss called Jen who said that, as a millennial manager, she would have covered for her employee and brought her donuts or any food she may need. We need more Jen gems in this world.

Thankfully, Tess said in another video that her manager was just as lovely, telling her to “forget about over time.”Her only concern was me and my safety,” the young woman recalled, gushing about how much she loved her superior.

Also in other videos, Tess explained that she was in a bad state after a night out drinking with friends, during which she had had a bottle of wine and four tequila shots. When she sneaked outside for a breath of fresh air, unnoticed by her group of friends, she wound up passing out. Luckily, it happened in one of Liverpool’s busiest cities and help was quickly summoned.

After other viewers pestered her about putting herself in a dangerous position and wasting public resources by taking ambulances and hospital vacancies away from people with more serious conditions, Tess asked people to be a little more sympathetic and confessed the nurses were not convinced the drinks she had consumed could have caused her to lose conscience the way she had. The doctors, however, chose to only test her for recreational drugs, and not anything stronger.

According to MSD, “drug testing targets only a limited number of substances and thus does not identify many others,” and the most common test, which uses urine, does not detect some opioids and hallucinogens. Still, Tess did say her blood tests came back normal.

Regardless of what caused her collapse, it’s right that she receives medical attention, even if it was related to somewhat reckless partying. The video, which collected some 7 million views, generated plenty of discourse and backlash, forcing the 24-year-old to defend herself. She eventually conceded that she would not make that combination of alcohol again. “How am I meant to know my limits if I don’t test them?”

Tess is doing “okay” now, largely thanks to the concerned man who called the ambulance in the first place, and her kind manager and nurse, and has even gone back to enjoying the Liverpool nightlife with her friends, sharing a video of her drinking responsibly for her concerned followers.