Naples, young nurse saves passerby struck by illness

Naples. Being a nurse is a calling that knows no pauses. This could be the incipit of the story that has as protagonists Sabrina Pepe, a young Neapolitan nurse, and a passerby over fifty taken ill in the city center.

Sabrina, working in the Neonatology department of the San Paolo Hospital in Fuorigrotta, was off duty and was walking in via Pignasecca, a few steps from the Vecchio Pellegrini Hospital, when he witnessed the dramatic scene. “I saw a man collapse on the ground. At first I thought he had stumbled,” he says, “but then I saw him sitting on the step of a shop, with his arm clutched to his chest. I immediately understood that it was something serious.”

Running closer, Sabrina noticed that the man had lost consciousness. “He wasn’t breathing and I couldn’t feel the carotid pulse,” she explains, “an unmistakable sign of cardiac arrest.” At that point, the nurse acted promptly, starting cardiopulmonary resuscitation maneuvers, as indicated by first aid protocols in emergency cases.

“Help was not arriving,” he continues, “and I didn’t even know if they had been alerted. In the meantime, the gentleman began to show slight spontaneous movements. Given the proximity of the hospital, with the help of a passerby, we loaded him into a car and rushed him to the emergency room at Vecchio Pellegrini.”

After accompanying the man to triage, Sabrina waited for news, holding her breath. “They told me he was in red code. In those moments I thought back to the scene, like in a movie, but the fear that it was a tragic epilogue was real.”

The happy ending comes an hour later. “They told me that the man made it, he is stable. The worst was over,” concludes Sabrina, who is now hailed as a heroine.

A gesture of promptness and courage that demonstrates how the professionalism and heart of a nurse never fade, not even when off shift.