The True Story Behind The Good Nurse Is Just Terrifying

“She came across as a strong-minded, intelligent individual, so I rolled the dice and revealed some of our findings to her,” since-retired Det. Daniel Baldwin (played by Nnamdi Asomugha in The Good Nurse) told People of enlisting Loughren in their investigation. And then they had her wear a wire to a meeting with Cullen outside the hospital. (They hesitated when they saw her scar from having a pacemaker put in, but, she told Glamour UK, she assured them, “I’m a cardiac nurse, I know I’ll be OK.”)

Confronting him with what she knew, Loughren offered to go with her friend to the police, to confess.

“He sat straight up,” she recalled to People. “The color of his eyes changed. He put a smirk on his face and said, ‘I’m going to go down fighting.'”

Cullen was fired Oct. 31, 2003, ostensibly while being investigated for altering the blood chemistry of six elderly patients, including four who had died. A hospital official told authorities that five of the six incidents ended up having acceptable explanations.

As for the sixth: Cullen was arrested that December on suspicion of murder in the June 28, 2003, digoxin overdose death of the Very Rev. Florian J. Gall, a 68-year-old priest. He was also charged with attempted murder for trying to administer a fatal amount of digoxin to a 40-year-old woman, who received an antidote in time.