I sent my resignation from the hospital parking lot

Dear Delyara, I have worked as a pediatric nurse for seventeen years. This morning, after a twelve-hour shift, I sat in my car and sent my resignation. I did not leave because I stopped loving the work. I left because love had become the reason everyone expected me to survive impossible conditions. Last night, I cared for seven children when the safe number was four. One child’s mother had to find me in another room when her son’s oxygen alarm sounded. Nothing terrible happened, which means management will call the shift successful. At dawn, the mother thanked me and said she did not know how nurses did it. I almost told her we do it by becoming frightened in places nobody can see. Instead, I walked to my car, opened the resignation letter I had drafted months ago, and pressed send. Then I cried so hard that a security officer knocked on the window. I told him I was fine. I am not fine. I have no new job and two children in college. Still, when I imagine returning tonight, my body feels like an animal being led back toward fire. I became a nurse to stay beside vulnerable children. I am leaving because the hospital has turned that promise into something it knows I will injure myself to keep.