These shoes don’t fit.
Sure, they fit just fine when I tried them on in the store. A little stiff, but all new shoes have that in common. They felt comfortable enough when I walked the length of the shoe aisle. I didn’t know they would rub against the tender skin of my foot, raising fluid filled blisters that hurt with every step. I didn’t know they would burn angry, red welts into the backs of my ankles.
At the end of the day my legs ache. Throughout the night, the muscles seize, waking me up. I know from class that electrolytes will help with muscle cramps so I get up and walk to the fridge to grab a sports drink, the pain increasing with every step. It tastes terrible but after a few chugs, the cramps subside. Back to bed, and even though I’m exhausted, sleep evades me. My heart pounds. I can feel the beads of sweat forming on the back of my neck, under my hair.
It wasn’t supposed to be this hard. I graduated, top of my class. I aced every test, every clinical, every simulation. The professors were confident in my abilities. I scored the interview and got the job all my classmates were clamoring for. I bought crisp blue scrubs and an ID holder that says I make a difference! And these white shoes.
The other five people who started at the same time as me? They seem to be getting the hang of it. They smile and joke and get their shit done. Their shoes fit just fine.
I need to break in the shoes. I drain the blisters with a lancet and put antibiotic cream and bandaids on them and at the end of the next day there are new blisters under the old ones because the shoes don’t fit.
Six acutely ill people in need of constant care. Medications to be administered, test results to check, phone calls to doctors and family members. Document, document, document everything. This one needs their drugs crushed in applesauce and spoon-fed to them. That one needs them mixed with water and flushed through their feeding tube. Remember to flush with saline before and after you give the medication. A clot has formed in this one’s central line; we need to administer TPA. Don’t give it too fast. They could die. Don’t wait too long. They could die. I’m on my feet twelve hours without lunch, or even a pee break, but nobody cares if I die. I kind of want to die.
It’s my daughter’s first preschool field trip and I am missing it. Apple picking and a hayride at a nearby farm. But I leave the house before she awakens and I get home after her bedtime. On my days off I am so exhausted and sore I snap at her when she asks me for a snack. Her lower lip trembles as tears form in the corners of her big, green eyes, framed by long, dark lashes. Mommy is so sorry. She is everything I ever dreamed of and I’m missing out on her because I thought this was the way to make our life better. Better isn’t supposed to feel like this.
Along the route to work in the morning, there are a lot of trees. I think about what it would be like if I drove my car straight into one of them. Would I die right away, or would there be pain? I park my car and go inside and start my rounds and after an hour I’m so sick that I run for the staff bathroom and heave up my guts. I can’t do this anymore. I’m going home.
I don’t go back.
And the day I hand in my resignation and my ID badge I’m wearing my comfiest flip flops and I’m smiling for the first time in months. The shoes didn’t fit. They never fit.
About the Author Maggie Friedenberg
Maggie Friedenberg placed 2nd in the Napkin Microfiction Writing Contest in May 2021 with her micro piece, Shoes. She won the $200 cash prize.
Maggie Friedenberg is a writer, reader, coffee drinker, and nerd. She is currently querying her debut novel, Holding Pattern. She is a co-host of the Rainy Day Collective Podcast, and serves on the patient advisory board of PCOS Challenge. Maggie lives in Philadelphia with her husband and three kids.
