Death in the cardiac ICU

Death is on our floor. It has been there for far longer than I have.

On my first day in the cardiac surgery ICU, I was running late. I hurried past the dimly-lit rooms, their monitors regularly chiming their final lullabies of the night before the receptionist brightly greets the morning shift nurses and flips on all the fluorescent lights outside the twenty rooms on this floor at 7:00 a.m. sharp.

There …

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