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The scariest day of Theresa Davila’s life also happened to be a comedic adventure, wrapped around a mother-daughter coming-of-age drama. It climaxed with Davila running away from her apartment complex, which she believed was on the verge of collapse, dressed only in a towel, with her two kids in tow, trying to flag down a bus.

Once the bus stopped, she would, of course, explain why she was running through the streets naked and screaming. But the bus never stopped.

“The bus wasn’t ready to receive this information,” Davila said, deadpan.

Somebody eventually did stop for Davila and her kids outside of the Starett City housing complex, which she thought would be reduced to rubble by an earthquake that originated in Virgina, but rumbled all the way up to New York City.

Davila relayed this tale during a storytelling performance at Montefiore Medical Center last month. It was a highlight of Montefiore’s Nurses Week celebration and offered more than a dozen nurses — the seen-but-not-heard worker bees of a hospital — a chance to express themselves and tell their stories.

The theme of this year’s Nurses Week celebration was “Telling our Stories.” Ronit Fallek, the director of Montefiore’s healing arts program, took this theme literally. Earlier this year, in anticipation of Nurses Week in May, Fallek formed a partnership with The Moth, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the art and craft of storytelling.

Founded in New York by writer George Dawes Green, The Moth hosts live storytelling “slams” and performances in cities throughout the country. They compile a regular podcast and a weekly show on National Public Radio.

The Moth also puts on workshops for groups, like the Montefiore nurses, who want to tell their stories. For Nurses Week, Fallek said 20 Montefiore nurses volunteered to participate in the eight-week workshop with instructors from The Moth.

For an hour or so every Friday, the nurses would work on their stories, starting with big ideas and then editing them down to tight performance pieces. It all culminated with a series of performances at each of Montefiore’s major Bronx campuses, including its largest campus in Norwood.

The Norwood event was hosted by Moth instructor Peter Aguero, a Bunyan-esque man sporting a thick beard, long ponytail, jeans, blazer and red Converse All-Stars.

For Aguero, the performances were particularly poignant. “I love nurses,” he said. “My mom is a nurse. I’ve been given so much by nurses, so I really wanted to give something back.”

Denise Reidy, a nurse who works in the cardiac surgery intensive care unit, gave Aguero a big hug after ending the show with her emotional story of overcoming a cancer diagnosis she was reluctant to accept.

Reidy liked the writing part of the process, but was terrified of the performance part. She said she was “sick and nauseous” the night before the event. But she delivered a spellbinding roller coaster ride of a story that ended with the life-affirming declaration that she was still cancer-free almost three years after the original diagnosis.

“One of the things for me is that I never got a chance to say thank you to everyone who helped me [survive],” she said. “So this was my chance to do that.”

Like Reidy and Davila’s tales, the nurses’ stories ran the gamut of plot lines and emotions.

Another nurse, Esther Kho Uy, talked about growing up scared to fail. She eventually helped surgically separate two twins conjoined at the head in one of the most famous cases in Montefiore history.

Alice Meyerson, a nurse at the hospital’s AIDS Center, gave a poetic telling of her time at a South Bronx hospital that closed in the 1970s. “I can taste the ashes of the Bronx that is burning,” she says at one point.

Evey Parchment, now at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore, talked about enduring a series of setbacks on her way to becoming a nurse.

And Denise Nicholson spoke about how she was “groomed to be a nurse” and realized she had the chops when, at the age of 14, she randomly helped saved a man who had been stabbed in the chest.

Each told their story live in front of an audience without using notes, which is how The Moth produces all of its performances.

Aguero says this is by design. “There’s this visceral catharsis of emotion in front of a live audience that you can’t recreate any other way.”

Editor’s Note: For more information about The Moth, go online and visit themoth.org.