“I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant: The Hippocratic Oath.”
Day One:
I couldn’t sleep that night. Well, I can’t sleep most nights, but that’s besides the point. It’s my first day, and if eight years of schooling were ever going to pay off, it was now.  Taking a deep breath, I rose from bed and automatically walked to the shower, yawning as I grabbed the scrubs that I laid out the night before. After the scorching hot shower, the steam embraced me while I dressed in the purple scrubs, gelled my hair towards the sky, and brushed my teeth. Escaping the bathroom cell, my legs carried me to my dresser where I finished the look with a watch on my right wrist and a Safe Haven’s Hospital bracelet on my left. Grabbing a muffin and juice, I paraded over to the world-renowned medical research facility, my next door neighbor.
“Hello, Doctor Claude, I hope you slept well last night because that will be your last. Here is your pager,” the lady in front of me spilled out the moment I carded in. “Doctor Claude? Pager, take it.” Tentatively, I moved my hand to hers to grab the pager from her tight grip. “I am Doctor Stormloop, it’s nice to meet you,” she introduced, simultaneously extending her abnormally large hand to shake. She must have noticed my scrunched eyebrows, narrowed eyes, and my fiddling hands when she followed up with a “It’s Dutch.”
“Doctor Liam Claude. It’s nice to—”
“—At Safe Haven’s Hospital, we research. We cure. We move to the next. Of course, that is not always possible, but I’m sure they told you that during your interviews. Considering this is your first day, you will be assigned to Ms. Jesse Licht. She was admitted during the night shift and needs a doctor. Good luck.” As quickly as she spoke, she was washed away into the sea of medics. I felt something vibrate at my hip to look down and see that my pager was trying to steal my attention. Giving me orders to go to room 125, my feet follow the map engrained in my head from the countless interviews that preceded. Making my way to the patient’s room, I grabbed her chart. It was blank besides a scribbled, incoherent note at the bottom. I opened the door.
She was asleep. Striding to her side, I tapped her shoulder, and her strikingly blue eyes fluttered opened. Hesitantly, I took a step back.
“Good morning. I am Doctor Claude and will be nursing you back to health, Ms. Licht.” She only nodded. “I assure you that I will cure you,” crashed out of my mouth like a wave in a hurricane.
“I will not be ashamed to say ‘I know not.’”
“That’s the thing. I don’t even know what’s wrong with me,” she whispered.
“We will run lab tests. In the meantime, I’ll perform a physical, Ms.—
“—Jesse. You can call me Jesse.”
Day 2:
Jesse. Jesse. Jesse. Her name floating around my brain as if it were a satellite, lost in space.
“Dr. Claude, you’re thirty minutes early. Wonderful. Ms. Licht’s—” Jesse. She likes to be called Jesse. “—tests were sent to the lab last night. Okay?” Before I could even mutter a coherent response, Dr. Stormloop replies, “Good.” Entangled in the waves, she drowned into the crowd while I surfed to room 125. Pushing the door opened, she lay awake.
“Good morning, you’ll be pleased to know that your tests are being examined at the lab during this very moment.” She stiffened, her shoulders tense.
“Thanks,” she mumbled while fiddling with something in her small, fragile hands.
“What do you have there?” I nodded to the direction of her fingertips.
“Oh. This?” she held up what I presumed to be a flower. “It’s a Snowdrop and Water Lily bouquet. Just a necklace.”
Nothing was ever a just.
“I see. Did anyone give it to you?” I asked in attempt of making and keeping a conversation.
“I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know.”
“My sister...before...before she died,” her words wavering as to not fall to the temptation of shakiness. I moved to the chair across her bed and took a seat. If it was the one pleasantry taught throughout the several interviews, it was to swim to the bottom of the ocean to find what was underneath the rippling waves, crystal blue water, and the litter. Or that’s just me. Without hesitation, I dove into her eyes.
“I’m sorry.” I attempted to comfort her, but I know very well that “sorry” is the most bullshit word in the dictionary. “My parents passed as well. Before they went, they gave me this watch,” I rolled up my sleeve to show what imprisons my right wrist. “I’ve never had to change the battery. It just keeps ticking,” reminding me of deadlines, like my parents.
“Like life.”
“Yeah, like life.”
That’s what I did that day. For twelve hours— I talked, I listened, and I wondered. Like any phenomenal poem, she only showed the tip of an iceberg, refusing to let anyone see the other ninety-percent of her make up. I guess I’m not just anyone. Jesse was only twelve when she lost her rock, and the weeds grew to fill in its place in her garden. She’s a florist designer who despises the thorns but loves the rose. Her face glows like the sun talking about flowers as she fiddles with the bright sun beams that have escaped her ponytail. The clear blue sky dazzling through her eyes.
When I left at seven, it was pouring.
Day 5:
“Good morning,” she greeted when I entered her room.
“Morning. The lab results are in, and you have been diagnosed as anemic. Having anemia means you have a decreased amount of red blood cells, so the rest of your body is not getting oxygen transported. Lucky for you, it is highly curable. We’ll start on the iron supplements right away, and you should be out of here in no time.” I failed to say that anemia does not take four days to diagnose as the tick-tocks echoed throughout my thoughts.
“Okay.” She seemed to know too. Her flowers were on the nightstand to her left. The ones I bought her yesterday were on the parallel nightstand: water lilies and snowdrops.
“I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.”
Day 12:
While our relationship was building, she was only deteriorating. I switched the supplements to transfusions, but she only grew in pallor and was succumbed to weakness. I’ve helped her eat, bathe, and dress. It was a job for nurses, but we were short during the night shift, and Jesse’s my patient. After my shifts, I’ve spent overtime dissecting and figuring out the puzzle that is her blood, my watch keeping me company with its harmonizing tick-tocks that played every second.
“I will prevent disease whenever I can.”
“I guess there’s poison ivy amongst the lovely garden,” I murmured while I was checking her monitors.  I peered over, and her face had gone flushed. It was a relief to know that her paleness wasn’t permanent.
“Can I see your watch?”
“Why?” I retorted.
“I want to examine the object that you can never be seen without.”
“I’m a doctor. Of course I need to wear a watch at all times.”
“Can I pretty please see the object that has incorporated a non-stop tick into your life?”
“You could have just asked.” Her eyes rolled as I hesitantly strided to her bedside. I took a seat in the chair that had been my home these past few weeks. Slowly and cautiously, I laid out my arm for her viewing pleasure.
“It’s purple. I didn’t strike you as a purple kind of guy. I mean, I know you have a pair of purple scrubs but still.”
“What kind of guy did you profile me as?”
“A guy with secrets.” she sputtered, simultaneously unclasping the watch from its prison, my wrist. The prisoners revealed.
“Doctors have their secrets.” She didn’t speak.
She placed her lips to my red.
Time ticked by, and when she picked her head up, my lips found her pink.
Day 22:
My pager woke me from my sleepless unconscious. Jesse. Scrambling out of bed, I threw on the first pair of scrubs I could grab in my dresser: the purple ones. Sprinting towards the table, where I previously drooled over, I grabbed the lab diagnostics. I ran towards Safe Haven.
Nurses were yelling at me from all different directions, but I didn’t care. Carrying her file, I stormed to room 125, and when I threw open the door, my eyes immediately glared upon the dead flowers. Jesse sat upright in a bed that wreaked of urine but looked of blood. Rushing towards her, I focused on her colorless face. She was collapsing down, but my arm found the small of her back, refusing to let her body float away into the sea. She cringed when my arm touched her back and yelled out in pain as she hunched over and wrapped her arms around her abdomen. Her body was shutting down. The tick-tocks tick-tocks tick-tocks exploding inside my brain. I opened her file; peering at her arms, they were infected and bruised. Thorns and weeds that inhabited an ill-treated flower. A beautiful, lovable, misdiagnosed flower.
“Paroxysmal Nocturnal Hemoglobinuria! Tick-tock PNH! Holy s***, she’s not anemic. No, we treated her all wrong. Tick-tock Nurse! Prep Ms. Licht for surgery. She needs a bone marrow transplantation Tick-tock immediately.”  Gently cradling her, I placed Jesse on the stretcher which wheeled her to her final destination.
Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
I ripped the goddamn watch off of my wrist.
Day 23:
They told me to go home. Go sleep.
I merely laughed.
A garden cannot be left untended.
Day 24:
Keeping my head afloat, I rode the wave to room 125. As my patient, I was in charge of clean-up duty. Taking a deep, uneven breath, the door cracked open. Peering inside, I saw my bright and beautiful garden in full bloom.
I wanted to save her life. So I did.