"I know," Talia responded with a laugh and a shake of her head. She bit down on telling him that it didn't make him invincible, since he was smart enough to know that, even if he was just a little cockier lately than usual.
She made a noise of agreement, now thoroughly pulled into what she was doing. Zach’s question about her rotations pulled her back into the conversation and she glanced over at him.
“Oh, I did have to do a rotation,” she corrected. “It’s a requirement. But unlike most of my colleagues I just don’t have what it takes to do it. I prefer a different setting.” She pulled her mask down, taking a momentary reprieve from her work. “I cried in the staff room for an hour after the first patient I lost, and the second.” It was a rite of passage, but that didn’t make it any easier to stomach. Every doctor lost patients, especially in trauma.
“I found I out prefer to figure out what happened to a patient.” She pulled her mask back up and went back to work. “I would have still been helping people, just in a different way.” She’d never explained her think this in depth to anyone, but she felt okay saying it to Zach. There weren’t many things that she wouldn’t feel okay speaking to him. “I just can’t take death when I know I could have prevented it.”
She hadn’t meant to get so serious on him, but it felt good to get some of that out, even if it had never been baggage particularly, just things that no one else had ever cared to hear.
It wasn’t long before she was done with what she intended to do and pulled the gloves and mask she’d been wearing off.
“I think we can leave this guy as is,” she told Zach. “No one else ever ventures into this part, so they won’t mind if it stays a little unkempt for a day or so.” And it wasn’t like the zombie could rot any further than it already had. Maybe later she would come back and really take a look at the organs and things. It didn’t feel necessary right now.