Machaon Amador {D8 - Fin}

I'm sick of death.

Every morning I don my blue scrubs before the sun peers over the horizon, shove half-baked bread into my mouth and leave a note on the pantry for my mom whenever we're low on groceries. I'm awake before dawn everyday (except weekends, thank Ripred) because I have one of the worst jobs in existence; a nurse's assistant. And before you go and say nursing is a woman's job, fuck off. I'm not just any nurse's assistant. I work in hospice. Don't know what hospice is? Let me spell it out for you - it's where people are sent to die, young and old. The terminally ill, the withering elderly, people with no hope left. Everyone who comes to this place dies, and it's my job to take care of them as they drop like flies.

So yeah, fuck your Hunger Games. You think that's bad? Try working here.

My mom was an actual nurse at the same facility, but she never warned me about how damn depressing it was. Whenever I thought of nurses I thought of healing, saving, changing, making an impact on people's lives. I didn't discover the truth about this place until it was too late - you can't actually save anyone. You can make them comfortable with pillows and tasty food, you can offer a shoulder for their tears as they cry about their inevitable fates, and you can let them spend their last agonizing moments with their grieving family members. Other than that, we're fucking powerless. A new face is a new corpse waiting to rot. Most of them are old men and women with sicknesses and brittle bones, and they're usually the ones who are most prepared to face the unknown. But there are young ones, too. Children. Infants. Yes, I've seen babies die. Yes, I've cared for little kids who perished in the middle of the night.

I've become an empty shell.

I swear to Ripred if you ever tell me to "cry you a river" or "get over it," I will punch both of your eye sockets with my mom's wedding ring. I walk into that white building everyday knowing that some of my patients have died overnight. Every week there are too many funerals to count. Names? I can't even remember them all. Hell, I lost count ages ago of how many of my own patients have died. You think this shit is easy? Step into my polished shoes and my scrubs, walk into that bright-lit hellhole, smell the sterile dressings and the chemicals and the stench of of the dying and spend a few months there. Watch the families cry. Watch the humans suffer. Watch them cling to you desperately as if you're their only hope, even though you have no control over whatever illness is eating them alive. Do it, I fucking dare you. You won't last a month. The only reason I'm still here is because my best skills can be utilized. I'm too fucked up to go anywhere else, and I would disappoint myself and my entire family if I abandoned what I trained for just because it's "hard."

Emotionally draining is a better way to put it, but things are expected of me and I won't quit this job even if I'd rather go work at a normal medical center. I think my parents know that the stress takes its toll, and that's why I go to the bar a lot. Not that I have a drinking problem, it's just nice to sit in a different atmosphere with lively people instead of hollow ones. Drinking is about the worst thing I'll do, honestly. I don't smoke or shoot up drugs or creep on girls for stress relief, which is strange because people seem to expect that of me. "Handsome guy wearing a leather jacket, he must be a hardcore ladies man! Don't trust him!" What? What kind of fucking stereotype is that? A good-looking guy puts on a leather jacket and suddenly he's a bad boy? For fuck's sake, I just like leather, and I just so happen to like bars because they're simple and easily accessible.

My patients always comment on the way I look, too. Granted they only see me in scrubs, but that doesn't stop them from making remarks about my face. Old men tell me how I remind them of their younger selves with a full head of brown hair, hazel eyes and bushy eyebrows always making me look stern and angry. Truth is, I am pretty angry all the time. Some of them tell me that I need to work on my muscle mass to get the ladies. Some of the old ladies tell me otherwise, and it's sweet. They compliment my sharp features - the little things that I never really think about - and my height, insisting that average height is better than resembling a capitol skyscraper. I just smile and accept the kindness. I always listen to them. They have the best stories to tell, and the wisest advice to offer.

Do you see why I'm tired of watching these good people die?

It's even worse when it's somebody you love.

Her name was Lucia, and I don't like to talk about her. She was my first love, and she was normal until she was diagnosed with cancer.

Long story short, she died in my care. This is more then I ever say, and if you ever ask "is this the reason why you're so bitter?" the answer is probably yes, but I'll answer you instead with a "Fuck off." People don't need to know my burdens and tragedies. Life isn't a competition to see whose existence is most miserable, so you're not going to hear me launch into stories about my dead girlfriend. There is one thing I will tell you, though.

I'm fucking sick of death.

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