Carly Francesca grabs the chart from the nurse station. Gingerly, she skims the various names listed under the needlessly intricate “St. Josephine’s” letterhead.

“Mr. Larson.” She reads under her breath. She’d already given him his suppository. It was almost painless for the both of them. Until the Alzheimer’s episode caused him to get rough.

She’d had to call a couple of orderlies to hold him on his side while he experienced the equivalent of an alien probe nightmare. Carly got it over with, leaving Mr. Larson traumatized until his episode lapsed.

She shakes her head, as if forcing off some invisible slime that had settled at the tips of her hair. This job is often a disgusting one. Young or old, treating the sick brought her to terms with reality years ago. No matter how much she tries to ignore it, there were certain thoughts or ideas she could not shake.

Firstly, humans are bags of warm meat. Take away the pulse, and any dog, cat or beloved pet will eventually begin to gnaw at the fleeting remains. It doesn’t matter how loyal they seem to be, because they too are bags of meat the require sustenance to continue that pulse that will irrevocably end one day.

Secondly, humans are capable of incredibly nasty things. Some of them can’t be helped: old folks soiling themselves; diseased people leaking from every orifice; the un-washable stench of death as patients pass away in their depressingly empty hospital rooms.

Then there are those who cause people to end up in this hospital out of many.

Carly had seen the grotesque aftermath of incidents that resonated in her head most nights. One in particular, a drunk driving victim who had died in one of these very hospital rooms, stuck with her. How that girl had made it all the way here alive still confuses Carly, as the girl had been bisected just below her sternum.

The amount of blood from that scene makes her tremble as she remembers it. Reminds her that people are despicable inside and out. For Carly, it is easier to despise all people. It’s simply cautious pessimism – A way to protect herself from an evil world while she paid her way through college.

Two more years, she reminds herself each morning before work and school. Two more years, then she’d find work as a paralegal with her new degree. After that, a few more years of hard work to be a lawyer.

Maybe one day she will have her own practice, she daydreams.

Carly sighs and realigns the glasses on the bridge of her nose.

Her finger continues down the list until it intercepts her next patient. A patient the nurses took weekly turns tending to. This person – in fact, a child – is a center of stress and controversy at St. Josephine’s. After being here for the past four years, the child had forced five different nurses to quiet and even a doctor to hang himself.

That may just be speculation, Carly reminds herself as she swallows rigidly.

There’s no proof that he caused any of it.

This week is her turn. The quivering nurse places the chart back on the rolling station and makes her way to room 303.

Lucienne Arawn’s room.

***