Just minutes after saying “I do,” off-duty nurse Heather Schubert was back in caregiver mode — this time on the side of a highway, still dressed in her wedding gown.
Driving home on I-10 in New Orleans on the night of Saturday, Nov. 22, Schubert and her husband spotted a wrecked vehicle and “saw a man laying across the road” with his car’s airbags deployed. In that moment, the Ochsner Medical Center nurse says her professional instincts immediately took over, she told local station WDSU.
“When you’re a nurse and you always put other people first, that’s always my first instinct,” she said.
Schubert pulled over and rushed to the victim’s side, beginning a quick assessment in the middle of the roadway.
“I assisted in the manner of seeing what his pupils were like, if we had any trauma responses, which he, in fact, did have trauma. His pupils were not reactive to light,” she recalled.
She remained with the critically injured man, monitoring him and offering what care she could until emergency medical services arrived on scene. His current condition has not been made public.
Despite having just left her own wedding celebration, Schubert says there was never any doubt about what she would do.
“There’s never a question. There’s never a hesitation,” she told WDSU. “That’s just something that I will always probably be — the person to run into the accident to see if I can help. I would hope that anybody, whether they’re a nurse or not, if they see somebody in trouble would run and do the same thing.”
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Steven Tafoya, a critical care paramedic, told WDSU that emergency responders are trained to react to scenes like this even when they’re off duty.
“Just because we’re off the clock doesn’t mean that instinct stops,” he said. “What this lady did — on her wedding day, no less — is just remarkable and just shows her commitment to health care in general.”
