McGovern and her lifetime friend, Janice McCreary, who is also a registered nurse, share the full-time nursing position, tiny office and $38,000 salary. Every two weeks they take turns, responding to the health crisis of 475 county employees, 180 jurors and countless courthouse visitors.
If a juror becomes ill, a witness has a panic attack, an employee has chest pains or someone falls on the ice, the first person to be called is the courthouse nurse.
She'll respond with her triage kit in hand, in case she needs bandages, rubber gloves or an ammonia inhaler. Sometimes the nurse carries a defibrillator along, but it has yet to be needed. She assesses the situation and determines what needs to be done.
"We want to make sure members of the public that come in -- if they need assistance, they can get it," said court administrator Mark Dalton.
Lancaster County is one of only three courthouses in the state, Dalton estimates, to have a nurse on staff. Though the position is rare, the nurses serve an essential role in Lancaster, he said, especially with jurors and potential jurors, he said.
McCreary said she has helped a potential juror with cerebral palsy in the lunch room. She has examined people who thought they were too sick to serve and dispensed Tylenol and stomach medicine.
People with panic disorders tend to have trouble when called for jury duty, McGovern said, because of being confined in the jury rooms and being surrounded by so many people. Sometimes the nurses can help by talking with the person until the panic subsides, they said, and in extreme cases advise that a person be sent home.
McCreary claims she's pretty foolproof, though, when it comes to jurors faking illnesses to get out of the three-day commitment: "I can usually tell, after all these years." Both nurses have worked at the courthouse for almost 23 years.
In the rare time that a jury is sequestered or held into the night, the nurse on duty stays with the jury. McCreary remembers staying five nights with a jury deciding a murder case, early in her employment.
Other trials stand out in McCreary's memory, including Lisa Michelle Lambert's. McCreary was asked to go along with the judge, attorneys, deputies and family members to the home where teenager Laurie Show was murdered, just in case she was needed.
McCreary also remembers caring for a witness who would faint every time she came out of the courtroom. The witness was testifying in the trial in which a woman dubbed the "Chinese godmother" was later convicted of hiring two men to kill her ex-husband's wife.
The magic wave of the ammonia wand also has brought back a woman who passed out in the district attorney's office after getting bad news, a man who didn't want to go to jail and a student touring the courthouse.
McCreary needed more than ammonia to help the woman who passed out from a drug overdose in the courthouse bathroom with a needle still stuck in her vein or for the prisoner who tried, unsuccessfully, to hang herself with her bra.
Most days aren't nearly that exciting, the nurses said. Their time is usually spent doing more routine care, like monitoring blood pressures, dispensing Tylenol and Benadryl, doing odd jobs and filling the basket with $25 in pretzels and candy every week.
The pretzel basket gives bailiffs, law clerks, secretaries and deputies a good excuse to stop by for a joke or to vent after a frustrating episode in court. Even judges stop by for a nibble or a copy of the newspaper.
"She's the hub of anything that goes on around here, said Budd Mull, a bailiff who sat in the nurse's wheelchair while he read the newspaper and teased McGovern. "She has a cold heart, but warm hands."
Sheriff deputy Chris Leppler complained in jest, "Every time she takes my blood pressure, she puts that thing around my neck and starts pumping."
"It didn't do much good, did it?" McGovern retorted. "You're still here."
In spite of their teasing, the nurses' co-workers said the nurses and their office are useful for just about anything.
Nursing mothers use the curtained cot in the corner of the room for pumping breast milk. Bomb-sniffing dogs have tested their skills on contraband purposely hidden in their office. Nurses also store a wrap-around skirt and shirts -- for those who show up for court wearing too little.
Bailiffs get their ice and water, ice cubes, crushed ice -- whatever the judge prefers -- in their office. The nurses pick up a jury's drink order from the cafeteria and deliver it in time for their morning and afternoon break.
They even end up babysitting. In one instance, a judge sent a mother and father to jail, so the nurse took care of the children until Children and Youth came to take them.
In one frightening situation, a mother who was distraught about having her children taken from her grabbed McCreary's collar and twisted it into "a death grip." McCreary had been trying to comfort her.
"You can't do this to me! You can't do this to me!" McCreary remembers her shouting, before a deputy came to the nurse's rescue.
Though the nurses have done many jobs in the courthouse in addition to nursing, none is more unusual than being a sheriff. Early in their courthouse employment, the women were deputized as sheriffs so they could accompany female prisoners. There were no other female sheriffs at the time.
McCreary remembers picking up a woman whose house was littered with feces. The ambulance crew who had picked up her husband earlier all got lice, so McCreary was worried when the woman she was escorting combed her hair before going into the courtroom. As soon as McCreary could, she went straight to the shower, she said.
"You do get to see some sides of life you probably wouldn't (otherwise) working here," McCreary said. Her experience has made her more cynical, she said, but mostly she is grateful that her family has not had the trouble she sees in the courtroom.
Though McCreary and McGovern are both approaching 65, neither is really considering retirement. They both enjoy what they do and especially like the people they work with -- even the ones who tease them.
"It's actually fun," said McGovern. "It's been 22 good years, I would say."
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