Clarissa wasn’t a bad nurse, in fact she tried harder than anyone in the hospital, but there would always be the whispers. You see, every patient under her care eventually expired. Not that any of those incidents were directly her fault, there was always just something that went wrong.
Take Mr. Pasamba. It was an ordinary case of appendicitis. The operation went well except for a small infection that should have been able to be cleared by antibiotics. In the next few weeks complications from the infection were too much for him to handle, until eventually he passed away.
Clarissa could hear the talk from behind her back. “She’s the one that did it.”, “They called the morgue once they knew it was her.”, “Another victim of Clarissa the cursed.”, yet Clarissa was unscathed. She knew that as long as she kept her head down and did her job correctly she would be fine.
That was more than anyone could say for Mrs. Bengzon. She had been misdiagnosed twice and was weak from all the unnecessary treatments. She was found dead one morning in her hospital bed. Clarissa was the one who found her.
There was never any evidence of foul play, at least none that an autopsy could find. Clarissa was never held liable for any of the deaths of the patients under her care, and why should she? She was just always in the wrong place at the wrong time.
So Clarissa went on with her work, ignoring all the whispers. As long as she did her job, she would be okay.
That is, until the small incident with Ms. Villamor. Clarisse wasn’t careful and another nurse caught her in her true form, over the soon to be deceased body of her patient. Clarisse panicked and subdued the other nurse.
She didn’t know how she was going to be able to explain two victims, but then she had an idea.
Clarisse put on a show, “How terrible, the nurse felt so guilty euthanizing Ms. Villamor that she took her own life.” She had put all the necessary evidence in its place, and it didn’t take too long before the hospital believed her story.
So Clarisse the cursed followed through on her name, the patients she had still had mysterious circumstances attached to their deaths but that was just bad luck.
She was a good nurse that did her job. That’s all the hospital needed to know.
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Written by Karl Gaverza
Copyright © Karl Gaverza
Inspired by the Aswang na Gala legends
Aswang na Gala illustration by Lou Pineda
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