And now, Scary-Crayon presents...
Hell Nooooo Nurse!
by: Wes

I had no idea how popular the nursing profession was until I started clerking at a community college, but it's true -- left and right, people young and old (especially foreigners, for some inexplicable reason) are studying to become LPNs or LVNs or RNAs or RPNs or CNAs or CPNs or PSWs or one of the other billion kinds of nurse that one can become. Personally, I don't understand it. With health care becoming an increasingly dangerous vocational field in that patients are likely to sue their caregivers for even the slightest perceived blunder, it makes little sense that so many persons would choose nursing as a career path. The hours suck beyond belief, the job affords neither the prestige nor the inflated salaries that doctors enjoy, everyone knows hospitals are The ideal nurse.haunted, and wiping pallid yellow shit from the wrinkled asses of old people doesn't exactly sound like my idea of a party. Yes, someone has to do it (and God bless the people who do), but it's hard to believe that so many people would WANT to -- especially given the aforementioned shortcomings of the job.

So in a sense, I guess it's good that so many people want to be nurses. I've seen tons of people sign up for courses and express interest in the profession, but I have no idea how many of them actually see it through and end up working in hospitals -- and it's quite possible that many of them will leap from ninth floor windows and fall screaming to their deaths the second old Miss Betty drops her gown and instructs her nurse to scrub real good between her legs because she's been dribbling urine ever since she drank that iced tea at dinner. It's like those species that lay thousands of eggs -- many of the newborns will die before reaching adulthood, but the numbers ensure that at least some of them will survive, and the increased number of nursing trainees ensures that we'll have enough nurses to empty the bedpans even after 36% hang themselves before receiving their certification.

There's a catch, though, and it's a biggie. See, for a number of American males, The Nurse represents the ultimate fantasy girl -- a beautiful, buxom woman who comes running when he buzzes and tends to his every need. When he's hungry, she'll sidle up to him and spoon lime Jell-O into his mouth, cooing all the while; when he's lonely, she'll tell him about how the sky reminds her of her childhood, playing with her brother (alas, now dead) in abandoned cottages in her native Iceland; when he's angry, she'll stand there and take it with tears in her eyes as he curses her out and calls her worthless, and then she'll kneel on his bed and hug him, pressing her heaving bosom into his face and making all the pain and rage dissipate in an instant. When we think of nurses, we think of nurses as depicted in low-budget softcore porn dramas. We think of that sexy nurse who used to pat us on the head and take our temperature in elementary school -- even though few of us actually had nurses like that. (A man's memory can be a strange thing.) When we think of nurses, we think of Hot Lips Houlihan, Renee Zellweger, Jessica Rabbit, and Hello Nurse -- or at least we want to. What we DON'T want to think about is Nurse Ratched. Sad fact? Nurse Ratched was actually more attractive than the vast majority of today's nursing students! At least she got the goddamned outfit right.

The modern nurse.But today, instead of the form-fitting white dress and the incomprehensibly sexy white red-cross cap, the modern nursing uniform usually consists of a set of blue or green pajamas. What the fuck is that? To me, that doesn't say "bouncing, vivacious specimen of the human race come to put the flush of life back into my cheeks and help me walk in fields of gold again" -- NO! It says "psych ward orderly come to make sure I take my pills and keep me from bouncing off the walls of my padded cell and cutting my wrists with a plastic spork or hanging myself from the ceiling with my shoelaces." But I'M NOT FUCKING CRAZY, GODDAMNIT -- I JUST THINK MY NURSES SHOULD BE SEXY LIKE THEY ARE IN CARTOONS AND HALLOWEEN COSTUME CATALOGUES. I really don't think that's too much for an ailing patient to ask.

Nor is it too much to ask that a nurse actually look like she -- or he; I could deal with an attractive male nurse -- actually be qualified to regulate my health, meaning that the nurse should appear to be in good health her/himself. When I look at the nurse, if I don't WANT the nurse, I should at least want to be LIKE the nurse, in that the nurse is a healthy, attractive, happy human being. If I don't want to feel better so that I can grope Hello Nurse's succulent melons without fear of keeling over and dying, I should at least see a person whose cheerful mood inspires me to want to live life to the fullest -- for whatever reason. But when a scowling lardass rolls into the door, panting audibly from having had to walk down the hallway and with bloodshot eyes from not having slept for the last 24 hours (and speaking in an indecipherable accent at that!), I don't want to live. When a nurse like that leans her excessive bulk over me to check my IV, I don't smile and think about the beauty of this world and how glad I am to live in it. I think I'd like to puke until my organs spill out onto the floor and mercifully snatch me from this hideous existence in this hideous place with hideous people in hideous uniforms.

Save me, Honey-chan!

I was discussing this lamentable discrepancy between the nurses of fantasy and the nurses of reality with a buddy of mine, who expressed that he didn't much care for the outfit or appearance of the nurses, so long as they did their job and nursed him back to health. But ignoring the fact that a hot nurse needn't necessarily be incompetent, I think that if I had to choose between having an obese, ill-tempered nurse who would, minus the attitude, do everything right regarding my care but would disgust me to no end every time she walked into the room or a gorgeous, fawning nurse who was likely to someday give me the wrong medicine and inadvertently kill me, I'd take "Ogling Sexy Lady and an Early Death" for $1000, Alex. And look at that -- it's a Daily Double!

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