modern medicine

In a few weeks my friend E- will complete her contract as an ICU nurse at an East Coast hospital. After one of her night shifts earlier this year, she came home at 8 a.m. and slept until the afternoon. When she awoke, she sat on her couch, bleary-eyed and exhausted, and told me how she'd spent an hour crawling around the morgue—literally climbing in the machinery, fumbling with broken equipment—in an attempt to move a DNR patient who died after spending two months in the ICU. "I hope this is my worst job ever," she said, and went off to work another night shift.