Signature: Meredith Warner, M.D.

Surgeons are known to have steady hands.

Clean hands.

Hands that are cool to the grip, no matter the circumstances. Hands more precise than the hands that embroidered linens long before machines could do it. Hands that are strong enough to drive a nail into the hardest wood.

At a glance, you can see Meredith Warner has that brand of surgeon’s hands. When she tells the story of her first active-duty U.S. Air Force landing in Iraq in the winter of 2006—a combat landing, as is protocol, even for medical personnel—those hands trembled ever so slightly.

“I was scared to death,” she says.

Age: 36

Occupation: Orthopedic surgeon at the Bone & Joint Clinic of Baton Rouge

Hometown: Middletown, Delaware

She gripped her Air Force standard-issue Beretta sidearm, which she never did feel entirely comfortable possessing—not after serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and not in Afghanistan after Operation Enduring Freedom. Over her shoulders lay the weight of an armored vest. At her feet was a duffel bag stuffed with the things she would need in a fight.

Warner was steadied by her belief in making people’s lives better. Centered by a mind that can see clearly in even the most chaotic situations. Buoyed by a sense of humor that would help her cope with daily mortar rounds and helicopters sowing every brand of human horror imaginable.

“For awhile, when I heard helicopters, I’d cringe,” she says.

Her training allowed her to put her emotions aside. She cleaned the injured, repaired unspeakable wounds, amputated arms and legs when she had to. Sadness tinges her voice when she speaks of having to perform such surgery on 18-year-olds.

She was inspired daily by the commitment of her soldier patients, and most probably never knew just what superb hands they were in: medical training took her around the world, and at Tulane Medical School in New Orleans she earned the Marmot Award as the outstanding resident.

When her stitched-up soldiers awoke after her work, she recalls, the first murmurings from their mouths were usually, “When can I get back to my team? When can I get back out there?”

Treating the wounded in war deepened Warner’s sense of commitment. “I really believe in freedom,” she says. “The whole point of America is the freedom to work, the freedom to work hard, and the freedom to do well.”

Warner was honorably discharged from the U.S. Air Force earlier this year at the rank of major. Having spent her childhood as an Army brat, Warner is thrilled to settle back in Louisiana, where she gets to enjoy the people, the food and the culture.

In return, she puts in 12- to 16-hour days with the Bone & Joint Clinic, treating trauma patients smashed up in car accidents or ripped up by civilian AK-47 gunfire. And her hands remain steady thanks to lessons learned near dusty battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan.

At its core, she says, orthopedic work is the same in both war and peace. “We just try to make your life better.”

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