Luna woke to the beeping of a heart monitor. The hospital bed was stiff in every way and she was alone, unbandaged, and soon free of wires because why did they put those on her in the first place?

She’d never been to a hospital before but remembered seeing them on television. They were supposed to be haunted; she didn’t sense any wandering spirits though.

“Oh my god!”

A nurse in blue scrubs entered the room and shouted, shocked to find the patient standing on a wheeled, backless chair looking into cabinets. The rest of the area was a disaster, evidencing the curiosity of the young trauma victim, which Luna acknowledged was strange. She’d never cared about looking in and around and through things before. Then again, she’d never been in so much as a doctor’s office so no doubt this was a novel chance. It wasn’t like motel rooms had significant differences between them. If you’d seen one, you’d seen at least a hundred, and she figured she’d come closer than most to catching them all.

She shed a few tears for Pink, that’d already happened, and she knew her mother was gone. There was no coming back from that; she was blown to bits. It wasn’t that she felt nothing, she was sad about it, she’d have to be an actual monster not to be, but being sad wouldn’t reanimate Pink's mutilated corpse so she didn’t dwell on it.

There were other things to be concerned about.

She couldn’t do much about Pink’s funeral, but she did need to find out what would happen once the fuzz realized she wasn’t unconscious anymore. She had an airtight alibi, but they might still call her in for questioning and she needed to get her story straight and thinking of stories, where was her book? And her backpack from Pink.

Those were the items she was searching for when the nurse walked in. A stout lady with short, spiky hair named Caren who, while she didn’t swear at the child, looked like she wished she could and in fact, she did wish it. She’d been on this shift for ten hours now and she’d had enough of this shit. These kids were driving her insane and she wondered why she’d taken this job when all she wanted to do was sing. The dreams of an artist, talented and yet lacking a few, other, misogynistic qualities that should have nothing to do with anything when what mattered was talent. And she had it. A lot of it. She could have been the biggest star Broadway ever saw, could have written, directed, and starred in a blockbuster Hollywood musical, and where was she instead? The children’s ward. Why?

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Because she was female and it was expected of her.

No, it wasn’t her fault she'd ended up here; she’d blamed herself for a good number of years, but her therapist helped her see and accept the truth of it. Now, pushing thirty-five, she didn’t want to make the effort of a career change and she wasn’t going to stay here forever, but in this economy, it would be stupid to make a move to another hospital when this one was so close to her apartment.

She couldn’t leave the cats for as many hours as this demanded plus the commute.

Dealing with manspreading was bad enough as it was and the blatant ageism, and sexism, of the entire cis, toxic, simping species was nauseating. And don’t even get her started on the females perpetuating stereotypes on a daily basis! Red dresses and heels and lipstick. No doubt wearing waist trainers and/or other tools of the patriarchy and the topic of weight loss was extremely triggering for her and she was confronted with it on a daily basis and why couldn’t the doctor shut the fuck up about that shit? Did he, because of course it was a he, think she enjoyed being overweight? She put up a brave front but no! No, she did not! She dressed her best, but what was she supposed to do when nothing in this first-world classist society was designed for use by her? Everything, all of it, was made to push her to conform and dammit she wouldn’t do that. She’d done enough of that in her youth and she wasn’t going to try and force herself into any more boxes!

Fortunately, Caren was asexual and had no real interest in anyone whatsoever so it wasn’t as if she had to go home to pain and loneliness, but these kids were getting on her last nerve. Maybe she was a tiny bit bitter, jealous even, of all the attention lavished on them. The fruits of overpopulation and here she was trying to save their carbon-emitting asses, never mind that the ones who survived illness and ‘tragedy’ would find themselves some extra privilege in speaking tours and book deals telling how they overcame the odds. No mention of herself, of Caren who worked long hours administering medication and changing bedpans and emptying bags and cleaning up puke and-

She must have done something wrong in her last life. She’d had her palm read before and nothing like this was mentioned, but she’d been thinking of trying past life regression and now she was second-guessing the idea because maybe she didn’t want to know. It was better to get through this life without killing anyone and move on to the next with positive vibes and good karma.

But what the fuck, right? What? Quitting her job wasn’t that big of a deal. She could do it. She could walk out and not take one look back without caring and she would be free of this shit. She could live a happy life with the cats. She had some savings and she could take the cam girl route.

There were plenty of foolish men out there who liked them bigger and would fork out bucks for feet pics.

She could afford a bottle of nail polish.