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How do you look at the world without jaded eyes when you live with darkness inside?
Your world is different from anyone else's.
They complain about their cubicle, their boss
Their short weekends and some of those things we do have in common.
But they could never understand the long hours
Or the fact that sometimes you can't leave just because the clock says your shift has ended.
The times you don't get to eat lunch or that you literally run from room to room.
The knowledge you have the power to save a life, or, if you screw up, to take one.
The doctors who take their bad day out on you and the other staff members who don't feel like being all they can be, and so you have to do your job and theirs.
How do you keep the darkness inside and not let the rest of the world see it?
Would they understand how it feels to watch a tear fall from a father's eye onto his lifeless son's face;
to watch a husband of 30 years kiss his wife good-bye for the last time and go home to an empty house;
to comfort the young person just given the news that they have an incurable illness; or
to have a drunken, drugged or psychotic person hit you, spit on you or call you unspeakably horrible names and know you can't fight back; that it is their "disease" assaulting you, so just smile and "move on"?
What happens if the darkness comes out?
If I cry will I ever be able to stop?
Will I lash out at the people I love the most?
Who will save me from myself?
That is the question.
Kim Troutman works in the emergency department at Pinnacle Health Community Campus Hospital, Harrisburg, PA
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