One of the challenges writers face is what to leave out.

Sometimes, good stuff gets cut so the essential stuff can get in. I’ve been a writer long enough for this not to bother me, but on one recent story, it did.

Here’s what else I wanted to write about Wahiawa General Hospital:

Leigh Cruz is the person who keeps the aging facility going.

She is a Leilehua grad who describes her back story as, “surfer girl who hung out with my brothers and fixed cars.” She has worked at Wahiawa General since 1984, and she fixes stuff. She gets calls in the middle of the night if a fire alarm goes off or an elevator is stuck. She handles the boilers and the generators and the medical gas inspections and keeps records on the minutiae of each repair. She trained nine new facilities managers over 11 years, telling them about the idiosyncrasies of the buildings. In 2007 she finally was named facilities manager when it was clear she knew more about the place than anyone they could bring in.

“This is my home,” Cruz says. “I spend more time here than at my own house.” When she says that, she’s not complaining.

The stories of the things Wahiawa General has endured are told with pride. When CEO Don Olden first visited the hospital, years before he took the job, there was a 22-gallon red bucket smack in the middle of the lobby. A hose ran from a huge hole in the ceiling down to the bucket to catch rain. “The ceiling looked like a meteorite came through,” Olden says. Four years later, when he took the job at Wahiawa, the red bucket was still there.

It’s gone now. The roof has been repaired. The hospital used to have a brigade of 25 buckets to deploy during the rainy season.

“How many buckets do we have now?” Olden asks.

“Maybe two,” Cruz says, grinning.

There was an obstetrics department that is long gone, though former OB nurses happily come running from their current assignments to help when there’s a baby about to be born in the emergency room.

Martha Peterson of the Peterson Upland Egg Farm family is president of the hospital auxiliary. Her first connection to the hospital was when she got in a car crash as a teen and was taken to Wahiawa General in a station-wagon-style ambulance driven by a hospital orderly. Peterson comes to visit family in long-term care every day. “People who live in Wahiawa don’t want to get on the freeway and fight traffic into town to visit ailing relatives, and they certainly don’t want to ride that far in an ambulance to get to an emergency room,” she said.

There is familiarity here, and continuity — that measure of stability that people want when they’re not feeling well.

“I had a procedure here 10 years ago, and then I went in again two months ago. I had the same nurse,” Peterson said. “And she remembered me.”

It’s that kind of place.

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.