Thalia Rhea My Personal Nurse ✯ | Original |

I hope she is out there somewhere, holding someone else’s hand as they learn the same brutal, beautiful lesson.

“This is what your nerves are doing,” she said, turning the volume low. “Chaotic. Beautiful. Utterly beyond your control. Don’t fight the rhythm. Let it play through you.” thalia rhea my personal nurse

“I’m not here to save your life,” she said, setting the bin on my kitchen counter. “I’m here to help you live inside it.” I hope she is out there somewhere, holding

Over the months, Thalia revealed herself in fragments. She had been a combat nurse in Fallujah. She had held a nineteen-year-old’s intestines in place with her bare hand while a medevac took forty-five minutes to arrive. She had also held her own mother’s hand as Alzheimer’s erased her, room by room. She had no children, no partner, no pets. “My attachments are to the living moment,” she said. “Makes it easier to leave when the shift ends.” Beautiful

The succulent is still alive. I am still alive. Some days, I still hate my body. Some days, I cry without shame. And on the hardest nights, when the nerves fire their senseless alarms, I put on Beethoven’s Seventh, close my eyes, and hear a woman in wilted-green scrubs humming off-key, reminding me that survival is not about strength.