"The Wounded Healer" by Gabriela Salah

On a busy night in the middle of New York City, in a small rented flat, laid Darla Roberts after a long day of working in the city's hospital. The neon signs light entered through the window and shined upon her wrinkled forehead. Those wrinkles, though, weren't of old age, Darla was barely 30 years old, the stressful days and sleepless nights being the head nurse at one of the busiest hospitals in the country left their mark on this young but tired woman.
This was one of the hard days, her feet and head ached with bulging pains, her hands were sore from doing chest compressions and filling paperwork; but what hurt her the most was the remaining feeling of having lost a patient. And today they were 5.
She knew, of course, they couldn't help everybody, not everyone would leave the hospital feeling better, but this time it felt like if she was responsible for their deaths. She felt guilt lingering over her heart, but, why? she's one of the most qualified nurses on the hospital, and her job wasn't even participating on surgery, all she did was try to help them.
Still, she felt the fault was all on her. She felt heavy, guilty. She felt like a murderer.
"You're a nurse, not a killer. You heal, not wound." was the mantra Darla kept repeating to herself, almost as if she was singing a lullaby. And she finally feel asleep, not fully convinced of the words she tried so hard to engrave on her mind.

Morning came and so did her responsibilities. Darla woke up at 8 am to do late morning rounds with some interns. The night before staid on her memory like a faint nightmare.
Darla realized she had slept with her uniform, so might as well take advantage of it and have extra time to get some coffee, so she just took a long and fuzzy coat and headed out. It was summer on the midst of a heat-wave.
Arriving at the hospital, the group of interns greeted her. She was a student favorite, with her kind way of teaching and her easy personality, she was a nice break from the mean and strict doctors.
Everything went very normal throughout the first hours of the day, but when it came to check on the recovery patients, things started to get weird.
Darla knew something was off the moment she didn't see her most recent post-op patient in their bed, because, how could it be?  the poor man had difficulty breathing, eating, let alone walking or even sitting up.
The other nurses and doctors were either too busy, or too tired to know what was happening with the missing patients, and most of them assured they were getting treatments or getting therapy.
Therapy. That sounded like a good idea in Darla's mind. Too much had been happening in her head since yesterday, that getting some sound advice was soothing to her heart.
Checking in the mental health ward, signing some papers, waiting on a cold chair, all led up to sitting on an old couch for 30 minutes with a shrink who ended up giving her some medication that must be full of placebo, and telling her she should just take the day off.
So she did, damn the health care system, but she saw that taking good care of her patients required her to be in a good health too.

Leaving her shoes in the doorstep, throwing her tired body on the bed, she reached for her purse and grabbed the pills and popped one on her mouth.
Thank God that before she could swallow it, Darla noticed a sting on her tongue.
She reached for the pill inside her mouth and placed it on the palm of her hand.
Was that..? Could it be... Needles?
She ran to her kitchen to get a knife and inspect the purple pill. Indeed, they had tiny needles on them.
So Darla knew no more than to ran out her door and into the city looking for an escape.
She walked, and ran, and stopped. Everytime she slowed her pace to take a break, she tried placing some sense into her head. "What about my students, my patients, my family?", she thought, but nothing made sense. Nothing had made sense since the moment she had to call the time of death for her 5 patients, or when suddenly her post-ops started disappearing, or when she almost swallowed a needle. So she ran.
And she did until a very old and sick man came across on her path. She stopped, as if her nurse instinct had kicked back again.
"Are you...them.. die?" said the old man, in a low and rough voice.
"Excuse me, sir?"
"Are you.. going to let them..die?" he replied.
And at this time, the profession she was so sure she loved more than many things in this world, the passion she felt for helping others, returned back to her. Also, she was a damn amazing nurse, and those years breaking her back were not going to be lost in a few days.

Darla returned to the hospital, it was now nightime, and she went, with her head up high.
Until she heard a noise and locked herself in a janitor's closet. But that was only until she toughened up enough to go out, and she headed straight to the grave. I mean, the morgue.
Walking among the cold bodies gave her chills, but she wasn't fully aware of the situation until she felt a coldness on her body that she was so familiarized with. A scalpel.
The next thing she new, she was on top of an autopsy bed. But, she was aware.
Fear crippled throughout her whole body. She blinked her eyes.
She was not there. Bur on a hospital bed, choking on an intubation tube.
The thing is, it was not a dream.