Bussey holds a master’s degree in Interdisciplinary Studies and a bachelor’s degree in English Literature. She is an independent writer specializing in literature. In the following essay, she considers how Peter Baida reveals the nurses’ strike as the defining moment in Mary McDonald’s life in “A Nurse’s Story.”

Peter Baida’s O. Henry award-winning “A Nurse’s Story” is the story of a dying nurse, Mary McDonald. Baida takes the reader on a journey through Mary’s past and present. During her last three days of life, Mary is in a room in a geriatric hospital. She passes the time reflecting on the past, talking to her nurse about starting a union, and preparing herself for the death she knows is imminent. As Baida guides the reader through numerous episodes of...