..if seconds are left..

I sat on my chair under dim light as I keenly watched the tracing on his monitor. Some lights in the station were already put off. It's enticing to close my eyes, but being assigned to a case of "anything-may-snap-at-any-moment" drove me to stay afloat. Her beloved other half was there, holding his hand in tears while he bravely tapped her shoulder as if saying that everything will turn out right. Married for 25 years, and having no kids at all, I understand where her fears are coming from. To devote yourself to a man in a relationship, and having lasted that long despite all the "we tried everything to have one but nothing worked out" melts my heart. And now there she was, clinging on the flimsiest hope that the man she loved her whole life will get out from the place away from defibrillator, away from another attack of arrhythmia, away from bustling nurses whenever the tracing becomes unstable. And unstable is an under rate word.

Even if the Fundamentals of Nursing taught me how to avoid counter transference and terminating a relationship with your patients, I am poor at regulating my own emotions. Simply because books can never teach human being how and not what to feel. The hardest part of my profession is to deny that at one point, you are emotionally entangled to people you know will never be there for too long.  You take care of them, feed them, change their gowns when it is soiled, give their medicines in due time, wink at them when they are looking at you and smile at their warm "thank you's". At the end of your shift, you realized that it is actually them who is teaching you to live the best of your days. I started this article inspired by someone who hold on to every unstable seconds of his life. I am immensely blessed for that little while I was his nurse, and he was my patient. I was his student, and he was my teacher. And our class that usually takes place in a deathbed, on a 12-hour shift ended when he finally let go of those seconds left.

Time. Relationships. Passion. True enough, we will never put value to anything unless we learn that our life is like a thread stretched out from its roll. At any time, it can snap away. While you might be reading this, there could have been few unsaid words we hoard to ourselves for the people we love. Say it. We might have been delaying forgiveness to the people who hurt us. Give it. We might be consumed of anger and disappointments to the people we trusts. Let go of it. Don't wait for "seconds left" to come before you celebrate life. Live it. "We're meant to lose the people we love. How else would we know how important they are?" Show it.