carmen cantelou {d6} cb, fin

I am not a good nurse. The responsibility that comes with being an only child and having to live up to their expectations turned my flame so hot that it turned blue; it wasn't necessarily an anger that they were trying to live through me, rather a sadness because they couldn't see that they could still live through themselves. They care only about my work, because to them, that is all I am worth.

If there is no humanity from them, there will be no humanity from me. I've figured out how to read and understand people because when you're dealing with the dying, you have to. I know that their care does not extend beyond praise and wages. Self-interest is a sickness, yet they do not deserve the cure.

I know that I'm not a good nurse because there's a power that comes with my job that I manipulate. The ability to play God; I'm wrong for doing what I do — but the first thing my teacher told me was that I'd never make it out alive of this industry because it is so cruel. It's a case of breaking hearts or having your heart broken. Kill or be killed ... and there's something about removing the surprise element of death that makes it easier to cope with. It numbs the pain a little, it makes life a finite concept that I can comprehend and not cry over.

It's not nice to see people suffering, it's not nice to waste resources on a lost cause when there's a patient in another bed who needs it more. Money talks in this industry — if you have money, you get priority and if you have money, you get to live. But that isn't the way the world should work.

On my ward, I get to decide who lives and who dies. I kill in the name of conscience.