My Hallmark nursing moment, with help from the hospital police.

Sometimes, with the drug seekers, the drama queens, and the legal requirement of pulling elderly people trying to mercifully go in peace from the sweet arms of death, I get in a completely shitty mood and forget why I do this job. I had actually just dealt with the latter in my trauma room- a 78 year old Alzheimer's patient in respiratory distress that the family (over the phone, of course) insisted be intubated- when I got orders back for a little boy who was being seen for knee pain.
I should probably mention that pediatric patients scare the hell out of me- especially when they need IVs. In this case, our tech had already stuck him- but whoops, didn't draw all of the labs the doctor ordered, nor did she start a line. Balls. So, we have to go back in there and put an IV in this little three year old who's already hurting. As we're prepping him, I chat with him about his spider man shirt and ask him if he wants to be a superhero when he grows up. He says no, that he wants to be a policeman. He gets really excited and tells me that he saw one at the store earlier that day. We stick him, and I bring him a popsickle, and he's pretty happy, but I get the idea that I can do more.
It was pretty slow, so I ran up to triage and grabbed the cops posted up there. I explain to them that I have a little boy who idolizes the police and ask if they would go talk to him for a little while. Both of them gathered some stuff up and came back to talk to the little boy- they brought him a little police badge and a bear, and told him that they had heard he was a brave kid, and that they needed his help to be a deputy. They gave him two stuffed animals as a reward for being their helper. He was so excited. I have never seen a kid's eyes light up like that before- I know that they completely made his day. I had tears in my eyes watching how great they were with him, and how happy he was- and I had this moment like, oh, yeah. This is the reason that I do this job. I remember now.
We actually ended up transferring him to the children's hospital- the doctor started to suspect he had septic arthritis- but I felt so good that he would actually have one happy memory from a pretty traumatic day.