Excerpt from "Small Deaths"

People always joke that I could have been a doctor if only I worked a little harder. As if by being a nurse my potential has been squandered. My dad wanted me to be a doctor just like him. “Nothing more exhilarating than resuscitating a human heart and dragging someone from another realm” he’d say at the dinner table. Adonai, my sisters and I called him. He had a real hankering for the prestige of being a God. I guess thats why he did it and why his father did it. But it wasn’t the doctor who braided my mom’s hair every day when the nerves in her hands stopped working. It wasn’t the doctor who remembered that her favorite show was Golden Girls and made sure the TV in her room was set to Lifetime. It wasn’t the doctor who asked her about the dogs she used to have while cleaning the shit stains out of her bed. It wasn’t the doctor who came to the funeral. He tried to resuscitate her heart on that final day, the doctor. No one could have done better. It wasn’t his fault her heart just gave out. He’s gone on to stop many big deaths. But those small deaths. That’s what we do. Those thankless saves. Those are ours.