“Have you ever made a kid cry?”

The 16 Girl Scouts of Waterville Troop 288 are energetic though well-behaved and they have come prepared with questions for Jodi Pearsall, a registered nurse at Community Memorial Hospital, who has been invited by leader Bridget Riley to the group’s weekly meeting to talk about her profession.

“Do you give shots?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever missed?”

“I think you’re thinking of an IV.”

“Have you ever wanted to do something else.”

It is an interesting question for Pearsall, who admits to a secret desire to be a hair dresser and also reveals she spent three and a half years in college studying to be an account.

“After all that time I realized I was going to be sitting at a desk off by myself all day when what I really wanted to do was see people and interact. So I enrolled in nursing school at Morrisville.”

The give and take is charming as the troop’s enthusiasm grows and Pearsall becomes comfortable being quizzed even as the girls’ questions uncover subjects not often touched upon during more formal presentations.

“Have you ever hurt yourself?”

“A lot of nurses have bad backs. We have to lift patients and help people up a lot.”

“Did you have a lot of emergencies this week?”

“We took a boy’s appendix out at two this morning.”

“Where do you get all your clothes?”

“Different magazines and stores. Where I work we have to be clean so I can wear my pajamas in and then we have to change into scrubs. And we wash our hands probably a hundred times a day.”

Pearsall, who was born in Waterville and lives there still, is a recovery room nurse and hers is one of the first faces a surgical patient sees when emerging from the anesthesia. It is a reassuring sight with her warm smile and ready laugh. In those confused and vulnerable moments the kind and knowing attentions she and her colleagues minister have helped to build Community Memorial’s reputation as an outstanding hospital.

Pearsall became a nurse not only to escape being isolated with a calculator but for a more noble purpose and she asks the girl scouts of Waterville Troop 288 if they know. “Why would someone want to be a nurse?

“To help people,” is the shouted answer.

“Yes,” says Nurse Jodi Pearsall. “To help people.”