The Nursing Director Framed Me For Stealing Pain Meds — But I Had Already Photographed Her Override Log
"You've been stealing her mother's pain medication," Unit Director Pruitt said — then slammed a full dosing cup across my left cheek. The cup shattered on the tile.
I have been a CNA on 3 West for two years. My mother lives on the second floor of the same facility on Medicaid.
The pain medication count on Friday night was short. Another four on Saturday morning that nobody could account for. Pruitt had been telling the administrator she would "deliver a name before the review." I was the name.
What she didn't know was that three nights earlier, my coworker Bea Delacroix — night nurse — sent me a screenshot of an override entry she swore wasn't hers.
It was time-stamped 3:12 a.m. Friday. I was asleep at 3:12 a.m. Friday. Bea pulled the shift roster, I pulled the MAR page, and we matched the entry to a four-digit PIN.
Pruitt's PIN.
Sunday morning, I walked into the med room before visiting hour and photographed the override screen in two shots. I folded both into a plain white envelope and slid it into my right scrub pocket.
I didn't go looking to frame anyone. I went looking to be sure I wasn't losing my license over something a machine could answer in ten seconds.
Then Pruitt walked into the hallway, saw Miriam Vance — the daughter of a resident — standing in the dining doorway with her tote bag.
"Say one word and I'll have your license by Monday," she told me, right in front of Miriam.
Pruitt controls the schedule. She signs the chart. She decides who gets written up. I make $19 an hour. No union. No lawyer.
I asked her once, quietly, what shift she was on Thursday night. Pruitt didn't answer. She just held out the write-up and told me to sign it.
That was the moment I understood something I couldn't say out loud in the hallway: the woman destroying my reputation in front of a resident's family was the person whose initials were sitting in my pocket.
I signed the write-up. Not because I agreed with it. Because the signature bought me fifteen minutes before she started the actual termination paperwork.
Then I stood up, smoothed my scrub top, and said the sentence I had been rehearsing since 6 a.m. Friday.
"I will. Right after I drop one shift report at the DON's box."
Pruitt told me, "That's more like it." She thought she had won in front of the witness.
What she didn't know was the shift report in my pocket wasn't a shift report.
The envelope stayed unopened until the DON was standing in the hallway.
The night nurse still has six more screenshots she hasn't sent me.
And what happened with the override account on my own mother's chart on 2 West — that's the part I still can't explain.
The full story is in the link below — chapter two starts the morning the state surveyor walks the floor Thursday. What the assistant director of nursing found when she pulled the override history back six weeks is in there, and what that same account was used for on my mother's chart.
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