Awful Truths

[ - mentions of hospital death - ]

In nursing school, they warn you about a few things when performing life resuscitation measures.

They tell you you’ll be winded. Exhausted.

They tell you that you must take breaks and rotate so the patient has the highest chance of survival when your body becomes too weak to be fully efficient.

They tell you the ribs will break. You hear it, too.

CPR is painful.

It’s a visceral sequence where primal instinct and adrenaline override logical thought, your body giving, giving, giving—trying to give life.

When you have that body beneath your hands, eyes rolled to the whites, their soul somewhere between fighting to stay and surrendering to the abyss…

No one warns you about that.

No one warns you how sickening the code blue sounds coming over the speakers, how your stomach inverts when you lunge towards the room.

No one warns you about the silence of failure.

When nowhere felt safe to collapse, the last resort was inward.

The vinyl of the chair creaked beneath Alivia’s weight as she sat with her elbows to her knees, hands dragging over her face to peel away the rot of permanence.

Death was final.

Irreversible.

The linchpin of grief.

Frayed ribbons of honey blonde hair pulled from the tight bun knotted at the back of her head, the rasp of her fingers over her face incessant. Scrub the failure off. Drag the layers of skin off until she felt comfortable breathing again. Her fingers reverberated still with the crack of the patient’s sternum, the meshy cave of his ribs as she compressed deep— effective.

Still not good enough.

Black scrubs clung to the hunch of her body, residual heat radiated back onto her skin, looking more like an undertaker instead of a savior. Skin paled from porcelain to sallow, lithe body malnourished under the grating buzz of the overhead fluorescents. The ID badge tinked softly, clipped over her heart with impartiality to the guilt gnawing her bones, her name and title an estrangement of individuality and duty. 'Registered Nurse' mocked her worth, sat beneath her name in red. Angry to be associated.

Alivia forced her head up, where she faced the blanketed corpse with eyes darkened by guilt. Her eyes held the tent of the belly, the white sheet still.

Too still.

The kind of still that had her watching expectantly, unblinking, waiting for breath to move the damn sheet.

The breath that would never come.

The toes poked in peaks from the blanket, stretched taut over the legs, the belly a small swell, the chest a dilapidated plane where her and Jake’s hands had crushed, the face obscured and reduced to features, not identity.

Adrenaline wracking her hand, forcing some semblance of normalcy, Alivia smoothed rogue strands of hair behind her ears, clearing her throat.

A whispered breeze from the cracked window ghosted the sheet, moving it in a way the body beneath couldn’t.

From behind, his voice came.

Low, steady, sure. Always.

Jake’s.

“Family should be here soon.” He said with a clinical detachment, throat scraped raw from earlier shouting.

Alivia stayed forward, emerald green eyes vibrant with exertion against the busted sprawl of vessels.

“I widowed his wife.” She said, voice thinned with resignation.

“C’mon. Don’t start that. You didn't do anything wrong.”

“I did. My hands were the last on him. That's on me. I didn't- couldn't-” A pained hum echoed in her throat, the blame swallowed as venomous truth. “His kids are gonna grow up without a dad. How screwed up is that?”

“…Well…” Jake offered, the heavy set of his brows lifting briefly. “At least you didn’t orphan his kids. They still have their mom.”

Alivia twisted around to shoot a withering glare at the man who had reluctantly become her best friend in two years of the same graveyard shift. “You’re not helping.”

With a sigh, dragging his hand through the cropped head of mussed black hair, Jake ambled into the room, sparing a glance at the recently departed. He stood beside Alivia, tall and lean in his matching scrubs, arms crossed over his chest as he stared at the opened window. “You always do that.” He nodded. “Open the windows when they die. You really think it helps?”

Makeup smeared in exhausted circles around her eyes, lips paled, Alivia looked up at Jake. Their eyes met, the storm in the clinical blue of eyes subdued from exhaustion, decorated in dark circles that matched hers.

“I don’t know,” Alivia answered with a shoulder lifting in a stiff shrug. “I like to think so. How are we supposed to know where to go if we’ve never been dead before?”

A hum came as his response, the veins in his forearms still threaded taut from their methodically frantic alteration of CPR.

“Maybe it leads the way,” she added. “You know? Carves the path, or gives them an option. If I—” Her voice caught, crumbled suddenly. Alivia looked to her lap, a fist over her mouth to hold in the scream that wouldn’t stop if it started. Her throat bobbed with a swallow of glass. “…If I can’t save them.” Her hand splayed firm over her chest, keeping herself intact. “Maybe I can help make sure they get where they need to go. Maybe I can still help.”

“Is that why you did it?” Jake asked, his tone loosening to a softer gravel.

A crease formed between her brows, head turning towards him. “Did what?”

“Became a nurse.” He gestured at her. “Did you decide to become a nurse to help people?”

A breath of disbelief parted her lips before she sealed them, tasting how it would sound when she spoke next. “I used to think so. I was bright-eyed, stupid, naive.” Heat flooded behind her eyes, mottling the skin. “I wanted to make a difference. I wanted people to feel seen, and loved, and cared for…” She trailed off, flicking a glance to him from her lashes. She needed the familiarity of him; the solidity of a living, breathing body. The weary calm of Jake, from the scooped curve of his nose, to the stubble shading his jaw. “I knew no one could do it how I’d do it.”

He tilted his head. “And now?”

“Can I say something awful?”

“I love awful. Shoot.”

“You won’t tell anyone?”

“Me and the dead guy promise.”

“Jake.”

“Yeah, yeah. I won’t tell anyone. Let’s hear your awful revelation.”

Alivia slumped back in the chair, a distant glaze over her eyes, staring through the sheet, into the inevitability of life and death. “…I…” her hands lifted, cradling nothing but the realization. “…I regret it.” A breathy laugh of incredulity followed, her bottom lip trembling. “I regret it. I can’t— I just can’t do it. The- the blood, the loss, the chaos. My mind is unraveling because it never stops.”

Silence followed as Alivia smoothed a hand over her mouth, somewhere in the depths of past decisions and hindsight.

“…I thought I’d be happy. Assumed I’d feel good by doing good.” A single tear streaked a hot path down her cheek, carving wet over dry skin. Salt hit the bow of her upper lip. “…All I feel is empty.”

Jake said nothing. He sat with the confession instead, nodding a solemn understanding with his hand rasping over his stubbled chin. “…Yeah.” His knees cracked as he crouched beside her, a hand on the arm of her chair for balance. “It’s not a job that gives.” He said through a sigh. “It’s a job that takes. It’ll take everything if you’re not careful.”

Alivia angled her knees towards him, invested in their mutual honesty, the single tear cooling at the slope of her jaw. “What about you? Why’d you become a nurse?”

Jake tucked his chin closer to his chest, eyes on the floor. His mouth opened, but nothing came. He closed it, tongue pressed to his cheek. With a soft click of his mouth, he spoke, a tender quiet to the admission.

“…I took care of my sister," he said, "I didn't want to be a nurse. But that's all I knew.”

“…You never told me you had a sister.”

“I really didn’t. And I don’t anymore.” His eyes lifted. Met hers, deadlock. “She’s dead.”

“Jesus…” Alivia blinked in shock. “What happened?”

Jake spoke to the far wall. Easier that way. “She was born microcephalic. More of a severe case. Doctors said she wouldn’t walk. She never did. Doctors said she wouldn’t talk.” He shrugged. “She grunted sometimes. Doctors said she’d be a vegetable.” He nodded, his nose twitching bitterly. “She was. The seizures started at sixteen, and one day? They just didn’t stop.”

Alivia curled her hand over his where it rested, her chest locked with breath she couldn’t release, anchoring herself to him. Perhaps even anchoring him to her, and not the anguish of the past; another person gone.

Another daughter, sister, niece, friend, a living soul someone loved—

Gone.

As Alivia opened her mouth to speak, Jake cut in.

“…Can I tell you something?”

Whispered, she asked, “…Is it something awful?”

He shook his head. “Not this time.”

Alivia squeezed his hand. “Go ahead.”

A bitter smile twitched at his mouth, dying fast as old mourning crawled onto his tongue. “Would’ve been nice if my sister had a nurse like you. A nurse that loved her without the conditions of being family. A nurse that made her feel seen, loved, and cared for.” He paused, brows drawing in. “You’re a good nurse, Alivia. Smart. Your heart’s too big for what they pay. Most people won’t give a thanks for you going above and beyond. Hell, some won’t even realize it. But you will. I will. You regret being a nurse?” A soured chuckle. “That’s fine. But don’t regret that you give it your all. Even when you’re on empty, you’re always in here making sure everyone else is better off.”

Tears pricked a violent well in her eyes, a hand clasped over her mouth to shut in her splintering composure. “Stop.” A whispered plea, broken over a silent sob.

“Why? Because you can’t stand to hear the good you do? The light you give?”

She broke.

Slow.

Professional decay.

Her shoulders curled in, body betraying itself, gravity consuming.

Yet Jake continued, jutting his finger at the deceased as his eyes locked on Alivia. “You know what he said to me last night?”

Swallow it down. Stuff it inside. Don’t show them you hurt. Don’t show them anything but the smile.

Shaking her head, both hands clutched over her face as the sob boiled raw and soundless in her throat, Alivia sucked in a deep, stuttering breath through her nose.

You can’t stop it. You’re going to break. You’re going to break and he’s going to watch you. The world is going to watch you, and the world will judge you for your weakness.

Sterile light poured back in when Jake gently grabbed her wrists, prying her hands from her face so she would meet the reality she regretted, the reality that needed her, the reality of blood, loss, chaos— everything that never stopped.

Dropped to a whisper, only for her ears, Jake spoke. “He said, ‘I asked God for an angel. He sent me that little blonde gal.’ That’s the work you do, Alivia. That’s why you became a nurse. That’s what you do without asking for thanks or recognition. And that—” Jake laughed again, of awe this time. “That doesn’t just make you a good nurse. It makes you a great person.”

When the world wasn’t watching—

When the world didn’t demand their placatory smiles and protocol—

When they peeled the scrubs off, left only with skin and ghosts that didn’t belong to them—

Jake and Alivia were like everyone else.

They felt.

They grieved.

And they did it anyway.

That’s what made them different.

They did the work no one else could.

They showed up.

They worked.

And they hurt.

The whole damn time.