Excerpt from How Can I Help You by Laura Sims, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

They also interfered with my patients' baths-but they couldn't interfere with my own. Back at home, I'd close my eyes in the tub and sweat out the rancor and suspicion they eventually piled on me, from one place to the next. Sacred Heart. Green Grove. Union Community. Highland Medical. Spring Hill. Each one started as a paradise-like the names suggest-but ended in quiet fury and disgrace.

My fury; their disgrace, I remind myself.

But Margo tries not to linger in the past. It does her no good. She was wronged; she moved on. Movement is key, I've found. To always be moving, wherever I am-even in circles sometimes.

I sweep by the computer aisle whenever I can, for instance. Push in the empty chairs with my hip and straighten the stacks of notepaper and tiny pencils arranged near each station. As I make my rounds today, a rumpled old man leans back and calls me over, his sad eyes brimming with almost-death, his need to be held-and possibly bathed-tugging fiercely at my insides.

"Miss, can you help?" he asks. When I reach him, I put my face close to his and look at his screen. I smell his sour breath, the unwashed scent of his clothes, and don't falter for a second. I inhale deeply through my nose so he'll know I'm not repulsed one bit. Not even one tiny bit. "The screen froze," he says. I push a button here and there, toggle the mouse back and forth, then sigh. "We've got to shut this thing down and start it back up," I tell him. "Sometimes that's all it takes. Don't you worry." I make the screen go black. Then I punch the power button and bring it back to life. His face lights up like he's seen the workings of a god. "Thank you, miss." "Of course." I hold him with my eyes, probing those pathetic depths, then I let him go.

Do I feel a twinge of frustration?

I do.

Those eyes, begging me for help. I want to help—the way I used to. But I left the last hospital in the dust, and that's how it should be. No—should be doesn't matter. That's how it is. Margo doesn't live in some imaginary world where Jane goes on doing her rounds. Margo lives in the real world: the library. To prove it, I grab a stack of books to reshelve, tell Nasrin I'll be back. But when I've found my rhythm-locating each book's spot, sliding it into place-the hospital sneaks back, seeps into me: the peaceful night-shift realm I used to inhabit amid the honeycomb cells of the ICU. I would roam back and forth, back and forth, practically gliding on those smooth, polished floors, checking pulses here and there, resting my warm hand on a sleepy head. Leaning down to feel a faint breath on my cheek, my lips.

But chaos could erupt from the heart of this quiet, too; suddenly I'd find myself standing by a patient's bedside as commotion descended: hurried footsteps, shouted directions. I stayed calm, soothing the forehead or hands of a struggling one, shushing them gently, steadily handing this or that to the doctor while keeping my eyes locked on the terrified eyes. I'd show them my shining face and my beatific smile and they clung to it, hung their souls onto it, and sometimes they gripped my arms with their wasted claws and literally held me, and I let them. They needed me. I was their living, breathing saint: their nurse. Even if I couldn't save them. Even if, at that point, no one could.

"The ones that die are the lucky ones," I once said to Donna, the head nurse I considered a friend-a close friend, the closest friend I'd ever had. I said it right after an "untimely death," one that had rattled everyone-even the patient's neglectful family. They said she was doing okay two days ago, her eldest son choked out through tears. From what I'd seen and from what the day nurses said, he'd only visited twice, and both times he'd sat in the corner staring blankly at game shows on the hospital TV. He didn't kiss her brow or talk lovingly to her the way I always did, in the quiet of night. I saw how lost she was, how alone. I saw what she needed in the pools of her eyes when they stared up at me in the muted light.

Excerpted from How Can I Help You by Laura Sims. Copyright © 2023 by Laura Sims. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.