taking care of you { will }

[ a helping hand ]

I lock the door behind me, swinging the keys into my small bag before slipping it over my shoulder easily, my eyes searching the dark skies as I begin my walk home. The late shifts at work are always the hardest but thats what I like about them, I like the fact that the challenge doesn't end until I get home, the walk home, also part of the my exciting shift. Stars blink down at me, dancing on and off in the distance. A lot of the patients often tell me different stories about the stars. Most seem to believe that there was something very spiritual behind them, others sticking to the facts that they were nothing but huge gathering of gas. I liked to think that they were more than just gas, that each one of them represented a fallen soul. I liked to think that my sister was up their, looking down n me, guiding me home, making sure that I was okay. I think thats what she would have been like had she had the chance to grow up. I think that she would have been the one to worry, me the one to fix. 

The thought makes me smile, my hand clutching the strap of my bag a little tighter as I tear my gaze from the stars and return them back to reality, to district six. It was not often that I felt the need to live somewhere else, to live in the more privileged district. I loved my home and I loved the that we specialised in helping people, helping in general. I think I would have liked district 10, helping animals rather than humans... it  would have been different, but nice, i think. But I didn't want to live there, because this was my home and even though it was just another piece in the game that the capitol play, it was a place that I could try to protect, a place that I was proud to fight for. 

The further away from the hospital I get, more rough the streets become. Houses become more scattered and the grim and litter become thicker and more obvious. Rats crawled in the shadows, their cries easily begin heard as they thought with each other, claiming the territory as their own. This part of town always made me slightly uneasy, the crime rate was higher because the people who lived here had nothing, they were the streets rats, the people who survived off crumbs and muggings. It was a detour, but I always made myself walk through these streets, I always made myself look around at these people with nothing, at their hollow cheeks, at their empty eyes, always telling myself that one day, when I was a better nurse, one of the best, I would be able to provide for these people. I would have enough money- because I would save it all- to build them a nice place, a place where they could sleep, sheltered from the weather, a place with mattresses and blankets...

That was my dream.

Closing my eyes for one last moment I turn around, this time, ready to head home, when I stop, my eyes drawn to something in the distance, just past the homeless, to a place where the streets become a little more civilised. It was a light, almost like a fire, and I was drawn to it, my steps quickening, not towards home, but towards the light.