12 The Leader of the Alien Race
One Month Later
JessI’m freaking out.
Again.
This isn’t me, either. I’m not a worrier. Or I didn’t used to be. I’m a California girl, damn it. We’re chill. We take each day as it comes and make the best of it.
But a month into nursing school I’m not any more relaxed than I was on day one. It’s still hard, and I still feel like an alien dropped onto a planet where everyone else has a photographic memory and speaks Latin with great fluency.
The leader of the alien race is Violet Smith. She’s squinting at me right now, in fact, as I lean against a hallway wall in the pediatric oncology ward at the hospital. My evil roommate can tell that I’m not paying enough attention to Nurse Hailey, our instructor. But I need a moment to compose myself, because around
