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CHAPTER ONE

“How can your liver be this good?” I stood outside Mr Nove hirara another slow-motion escape from their hospital bed

But I knew Mr November wasn’t nors around his titanium-tipped endotracheal tube, and from the way he was restrained in bed—six soft cuffs, two on each ar, a Posey vest wrapped around his chest and tied beneath the bedfrain with No one here was nore brown hair, average blue eyes, average hips My patients here? Let’s just say “average” was not the first adjective you’d pick for them if you saw them on the streets Or the twentieth

Mr November continued to squirm I wondered which cheerfula report to co out of bed behindme now

His IV pu jabs Crap

“Hey, you!” I shouted and leaned into his roolazed attention “Stay still!” I coitated patients the voice of nursing authority buys time I dashed to the supply roo of fentanyl, and made it back to his room as he started to thrash his head from side to side

“Stop that!” I hauled on ed to knock his endotracheal—ET—tube loose, that’d be the end of his ventilator-assisted breathing, which’d be the end of hi, and rushed inside When I silenced the pu he visibly calmed

“You have to stay still, sir You’ve got pneus and reset the pue nurse, rise up like aone thick hand up in the shape of a phone It was the international nursing gesture for, “Call the doctor?”

I nodded “More sedation Now Please ”

Mr Nove for me with a purpose, if he just wanted to be free, or if he didn’t understand as happening—not unlikely, with all the rabbed his nearest hand in both rip tensed and so did I— this job had eood reasons—but then he relaxed, letting o

I stepped back froloves, washed my hands, and went outside

“You okay there, Edie?” Meaty asked as I returned to sit behind runted a response and flipped open Mr November’s flowsheet to hide behind Meaty didn’t check in on Gina or Charles unless they called for help But I was new here Just when I was starting to feel like I kne to be a nurse atschool, my brother overdosed On heroin For the third time

An unknown “friend” (read: dealer) had been kind enough to leave Jake on a curb and call 911, which’d brought hiency department they were on his second dose of Narcan They’d put an IV line into his neck because he had too many tracks on his arms to find a vein Only so infected this far If he kept it up, I knew his luck wouldn’t hold

I wanted to touch hi a nurse to know all the diseases he loves to wear to hold his fucking dumbass junkie hand, a man came by and said, “Wouldn’t you like to see your brother clean?”

I thought he was going to tellready to tell him where to shove himself, when he offered me a job

CHAPTER TWO

Before, when I’d worked in a nice private hospital, if so particularly boneheaded, or exhibited poor nursing judgment, they’d have been asked, “Hey, where do you think you work at, County Hospital?” or, “Looks like you did a County job to me ”