You Can’t Keep a Good Nurse Down
Sometimes a nurse’s greatest impact comes when she simply follows her instincts. For West Tennessee Healthcare Bolivar Hospital nurse Shari Smalley, one patient encounter became a remarkable story of compassion, intuition and a life-saving connection that happened not once, but twice.
Smalley’s nursing career began in 2002, when she started as an LPN at West Tennessee Transitional Care, in the building that once stood behind Jackson General Hospital. She later transferred to C3, working under Sherry Graves, before moving into the V Tower when the women’s health floor opened.
While working, Smalley went back to school to become a registered nurse; a journey she completed as a single mother raising four children.
After earning her RN license, Smalley followed her passion for caring for some of the smallest and most vulnerable patients, transferring to the neonatal intensive care unit.
“I loved the NICU,” Smalley said.
Eventually, life led her in a different direction. She worked in the intensive care unit at Dyersburg Hospital and later moved into labor and delivery, where she remained until 2020. After marrying her husband and moving to Hardeman County, Smalley joined West Tennessee Healthcare Bolivar Hospital, first working on the Med-Surg floor before transferring to the Emergency Department.
Through every transition, one thing remained constant.
“I just like helping people,” she said. “Just seeing the good that comes out of it.”
That desire to help others was also what brought Smalley to nursing in the first place.
When she was pregnant with her daughter, an ultrasound revealed that the baby had a serious kidney abnormality. At just 11 weeks old, her daughter spent approximately two weeks at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital.
It was during those two weeks that Smalley discovered her calling.
“I felt like then that if I could give back anything that they gave her during those 14 days, they were so attentive and so great with her, that if I could give back half of; or even a part of what they had given us while we were there, that I knew I was doing what I should be doing,” she said.
Her daughter is now 26 and thriving, and Smalley has spent more than two decades doing exactly what she felt called to do.
Then came a day that would become one of the most memorable chapters of her nursing career.
A Chance Encounter on the Side of the Road
Smalley was on her way to Jackson for a meeting related to her work as a medical death investigator for Hardeman County when she came upon a serious wreck involving a father and his two daughters.
She stopped.
Smalley assessed the two girls, made sure they were not seriously injured, and helped get them safely out of the vehicle. She stayed with their father, who had sustained significant injuries, keeping him calm until emergency personnel arrived. She also contacted their mother and stayed with the children until they could be turned over to EMS.
She didn’t know the man’s name. She didn’t know that she would see him again.
Months later, while working a night shift in the Bolivar Hospital Emergency Department, Smalley was called to the front to evaluate a patient experiencing chest pain.
Something didn’t look right.
The Emergency Department was busy, but Smalley trusted her instincts and immediately asked that the patient be brought back for evaluation.
She started an IV, completed the initial assessment, and helped begin the diagnostic workup. His troponin levels were negative, and at first, everything appeared reassuring.
But Smalley wasn’t convinced.
“Everything checked out good on him,” she recalled. “But my gut instinct told me there something wrong going on with him.”
She asked the physician if they could perform a CT scan before sending him home.
The scan revealed the problem: a dissecting aortic aneurysm, a life-threatening condition requiring immediate intervention.
Plans were quickly made to transfer the patient to Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Then Smalley realized who he was.
As she was talking with the patient and his wife, something clicked.
“You were in a wreck in February,” she asked. “Did it happen to be on 125 going to Middleton?”
He said yes.
Smalley was stunned.
“Oh my, I’m the one that stopped and took care of you.”
His wife recognized her voice, too, the same voice she had heard on the phone the day of the wreck.
The connection was unmistakable.
The man Smalley had stopped to help months earlier was now lying in front of her in the Emergency Department, and once again, she was helping make sure he received the care he needed.
“You’re an angel,” he told her. “You saved me, not once, but here you are taking care of me again.”
The CT results meant there was no time to waste. He was flown directly to Vanderbilt, where the cardiovascular surgery team was waiting for him.
For Smalley, this was unusual even in her years of nursing experience.
“Normally, you call report to the transfer center that’s arranging your transfer, or you call report to the ER nurse,” she explained. “I had to personally call the CVICU OR team to let them know he left my facility, what was going on with him and that he was en route to them.”
That call helped activate the surgical team before the patient arrived.
He underwent surgery at Vanderbilt and survived.
A Connection That Continued
Smalley’s care for the patient didn’t end when the helicopter left Bolivar.
She gave his wife her phone number and told her to call if she needed help. During his recovery, the family stayed in touch with Smalley, sometimes reaching out with questions and updates.
Smalley continued to check on them, too.
Eventually, the patient returned to Bolivar Hospital on the one-year anniversary of the wreck.
Smalley didn’t know he was coming.
The hospital called her to the front.
“There’s somebody out here wanting to see you.”
When she walked around the corner, she immediately recognized him.
“Oh my, it’s you!”
He had come back simply to say thank you.
“Today is my one-year anniversary,” he told her. “I just wanted to come by and thank you in person.”
He told Smalley that she had saved his life twice.
For a nurse who spends her days helping people, that moment became one of the greatest affirmations of her career.
“You help people every day, but you don’t really ever get the gratification,” Smalley said. “It’s not just one time he tells you that. It’s every time he sees you.”
The family continues to live nearby, and Smalley still sees them from time to time. Their connection has continued through chance encounters in town, messages, and occasional updates.
The patient, Aaron Williams, remains deeply grateful for the care he received.
“I want to thank Bolivar Hospital and all the staff for your assistance in saving my life,” Williams said. “I want to especially thank Mrs. Shari Smalley who was there both times when I nearly died. She made sure that I was taken care of and her efforts helped save my life. I thank God for being here and being alive. Life is short, be thankful every day, and thank God every day that He allows you to live.”
For Smalley, the experience is a reminder of why she became a nurse in the first place.
Her career has taken her through neonatal intensive care, intensive care, labor and delivery, medical-surgical nursing, emergency care and even medical death investigation.
But through it all, her purpose has remained remarkably simple: to help people.
And sometimes, that means trusting a gut feeling, stopping on the side of the road or taking a few extra minutes to make sure something isn’t being missed.
“Probably one of my biggest highlights of nursing is just to know that I made such an impact on him,” Smalley said.
Two encounters. Two opportunities to help. One extraordinary connection.
And a reminder that when it comes to Shari Smalley, you can’t keep a good nurse down.
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