It has been raining constantly for a week now and, with the wet season at its fullest swing, shows no indication at all of wanting to cease in the nearest future. I have always loved the gentle rain, and so did Stella, for reasons unknown—the world just seems more wonderful, more interesting somehow, whenever the heavens decide to shed its tears upon the earth. Well, except when I am completely enclothed in the immaculate uniform of a nurse—then the interesting stops and the annoying begins. There is nothing more misplaced than a nurse, all wrapped in conspicuously sanitary whites down to his underwear, tiptoeing precariously like a crane through flooded streets and muddied sidewalks, utterly cautious in preventing even the faintest speck of muck upon his person—which is quite next to impossibility. It is a dreaded season for nurses everywhere. Still, what choice do I have? This week is the beginning of my being a volunteer nurse, once again, for a certain tertiary hospital within the city where uniforms are, I'm afraid, a must. Yes, yes—I have liberated myself from the confines of our house, sick with waiting and shaking from cabin fever, and went skulking back to the nearest hospital to seek work. It is not really 'work' in the strictest sense of the word, mind you, for there is not the slightest hint of monetary compensation in it for me. Not a penny. Oh, there would be quite a bit of work to be certain, but I do not yet consider myself employed. I, along with a handful of others, are mere 'volunteers'—quite obviously. But no matter. It is, after all, in the interest of gaining much-required 'experience', a valuable currency in the nursing world—or so what the hospital administration told us during our orientation—and what they most probably would want us to believe—for their sole benefit, at our expense, I am sure. Was it not just recently when they would have had us pay fees to work for them, the cunning bastards, until the government decided to interfere on our behalf?