A Nursing Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far far away, on a planet much like our own, in a kingdom of darkness and cold, there lived a poor Graduate Nurse who unfortunately passed her boards and was thus gainfully employed by a hospital run by rich, evil Kings and Queens who cared not a whit about their patient population, but only money, and how much of it they could stuff into their deep and bottomless, soul-sucking pockets.

This poor graduate Nurse came to work under a particularily vicious Evil Stepmother of one of the Wicked Kings and Queens. The cruel Evil Stepmother made the graduate nurse and her fellow slaves-in-nursing work night and day, toiling endlessly, with out eating or resting, for mere scraps. Whenever any one was foolish enough to ask for the slightest compensation for their hard, endless work, the Evil Stepmother made certain that nurse would get the exact opposite of what she had asked for, and seemed to delight in making everyone completely miserable. Some times, the poor nurses were publicly humiliated by the Evil Stepmother, and it was widely rumored amongst the land that some nurses were even tortured into insanity. Many nurses became ill and withered away, never to be heard from again.

Then one day, the poor graduate Nurse found she was not a happy, smiling graduate nurse any more, but a bitter, cranky and half-crazed staff nurse who was quickly losing her ability to cope with anything more complex than getting out of bed in the morning. Without warning, she Ran Away from the Evil Kingdom of Hospital Doom, never to be seen again by the Evil Stepmother or her co-slaves.

She ran and ran, and when she could run no more, she found herself a job in another Hospital Kingdom. This time, however, she worked for a Fairy Godmother instead of an Evil Stepmother, who treated her nurses kindly and with respect.

And lo, the nurse believed she was having a psychotic break. And lo, her medical insurance hadn't kicked in yet, so she couldn't get a psych consult and a script for Seroquel just to cover her bases.

The mutual admiration went on and on, leading the Nurse to feel that perhaps she had mixed up her tale with that of Sleeping Beauty, and that she had fallen into a long, deep slumber and dreamt endlessly a reverie in which her job was pleasant and her boss respected her employees.

Then one day, the Nurse had an argument with a Snotty Princeling Attending So-and-So who had surronded himself with a court of Knaves and Jesters known as residents, because he was too gormless to face a skinny woman weighing less than a sack of potatos by himself. The nurse used her Super Ninja Jedi Mind Tricks--and hot temper and loud mouth--to great effect, and vanquished the Evil Princeling from her castle. The nurses lauded her for her ability to smite the Snotty Prince, and for her unwittingly sending the Snotty Prince's patients off to another castle to be cared for, at least for awhile.

And lo, the Fairy Godmother chuckled at the plucky resourcefulness of her nursing staff and said in commendation, "So, I see you've met our resident Napolean with a God complex! He's an asshole, isn't he?!"

And the nurse, who rejoiced and sent e-mails documenting the miraculous event far and wide to her ex-colleaugues still living under the frightful rule of the most Frigid Stepmother on the planet, lived happily ever.

The End.