I Would Rather Be In Bed

I’m so sick of seeing people cheer for human suffering. For pain. For death.

Behind your little screens and keyboards, you sit in comfort, laughing and clapping as if someone else’s devastation is entertainment. Just what you voted for, right?

Sigh.

I’ve been an ER nurse for 16 years. I have held more hands than I can count as life slipped away. I’ve pressed on chests, fracturing ribs with every desperate attempt to restart a failing heart. I’ve stood in rooms where the floor was slick with blood, where faces were unrecognizable, where bodies came in broken, mangled, burned, flat. I’ve cried at bedsides, in my car, at my home over people I knew only on their deathbed.

I’ve heard screams that could shatter glass. Screams from people who knew they were about to die. Screams of family members faced with sudden death or a devastating diagnosis. Screams of suffering and pain. I’ve had patients lock eyes with me and whisper, “I’m going to die,” only to arrest two minutes later, their pupils gone dark while the monitor flatlined. I’ve watched a mother crawl down a hallway to her deceased child because her leg was too mangled to walk. The list is long and every one is just as awful as the next.

None of this, NONE of it, is “great.” It is not heroic. It is not entertainment. It is not something you “get used to.” Every single one stays with you. Some nights, I still see their faces before I close my eyes.

EMS.

Police.

Fire.

Military.

Emergency Departments.

ICUs.

Really, any hospital floor.

We see it. Too much of it. We carry the weight of it. We go home with the blood still under our nails, the echoes of last words still ringing in our ears. The last thing on anyones mind is their gender, race, class, or sexual preference. In death, none of it matters.

And yet, somehow, people can sit comfortably in their homes, sipping their coffee, scrolling on their phones, and cheer for suffering. Cheer for people starving. Cheer for children ripped from parents. Cheer for mass death.

Yes, there are sadistic people in this world who enjoy suffering. But most of you aren’t truly sadists, I can’t believe that. No, I think at the core most of you wouldn’t stomach it if you had to stand in the room. If you had to hold the IV line. If you had to fracture the bones in someone’s chest to try to keep them alive. If you had to watch the blood drain out of someone’s body. If you had to hear the death rattle. You’d want whatever measures necessary to give relief. You wouldn’t stand and check if they “deserved it”.

If you had to participate, your world view would crumble.

There’s a reason soldiers come back broken from war. There’s a reason suicide rates in police, fire, ems, doctors, nurses…are so high. The trauma of death takes a heavy toll.

But social media makes it easy. It keeps suffering at arm’s length, turned into headlines and memes. “Thoughts and prayers.” It doesn’t seem real when it’s a picture, a number, a statistic. That distance lets you sneer, laugh, and say, “Not my problem.” After all, they deserve it because of whatever reason you think makes sense.

But here’s the truth:

If it were you, you’d want someone to care.

If you were the one in the ER, dying alone because your family already left for the lawyer’s office to fight over your estate, you’d want someone to hold your hand.

If it were your child screaming while being pulled away, you’d want someone to fight for them.

If you were starving, sick, desperate, thirsty, you’d want compassion.

If your skin color, your accent, your documentation status were the very things used to dehumanize you, you’d still hope, deep down, that someone, somewhere, would care.

But you refuse to give any.

And maybe that’s the greatest tragedy of all. Or maybe, people really are that awful these days and I have too much faith left in humanity. Either way, this world is a far darker place than I’d ever imagine it would be, and I don’t know how much longer I can stand it.