Madigan Army Medical Center

October 5th, 2026, Interstate 5 near DuPont, Washington.

Sergeant First Class Jeff Hightower, an Army nurse instructor at Madigan Army Medical Center, was driving to work at Joint Base Lewis McChord when he came on an overturned vehicle.

He stopped to help, and then when he saw it, a woman with a knife started attacking her two children.

What the hell? Hightower didn't think.

Are you at military bases or working? I was

at Madigan hospital.

Yes.

Okay.

and still have a really limited understanding of what to call us.

I remember the first place I went to, my internship was at Madigan Army Medical Center up in Tacoma.

And they still, they're like, hey Padre, how are you doing? And I wasn't a priest.

I also, but they just called everybody.

Let's talk about your trajectory for a minute, sir.

Harvard George Washington Medical School, then on to Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma, Washington, Washington.

Why

Army? It's interesting.

Hmm.

Because, you know, before we called it AI and we were dealing with large language models and other things, and some friends of mine from when I was at Madigan Army Medical Center, we wrote a book on surgical decision-making and artificial intelligence before, long before it was a thing.

Um, and we just thought we were really nerdy about it and kind of trendy.

But, [clears throat] um, it turned out by the time it got published, it had become a big, fat, hairy deal.