I was 19 years old when my dad passed away suddenly. My heart still aces when I think of the phone call I received from my little brother.

“Ruby, you need to come home. Dad died.” My whole world stopped, my heart broke into a million pieces and nothing was ever like it was before.

Now, 8 years later I still miss him terribly — and sometimes, on weak days, I cry myself to sleep and let my creative mind wander a little bit, into the corners of my mind where I hide the pain and the mess of his…

When I woke up this morning, I expected to have a pretty average day. I am currently working as a Junior Doctor in the Swiss Alps, which means waking up to the sun rising beneath the snow-covered mountains and enjoying the breathtaking view while having a first desperately needed coffee.

Never would I have imagined discovering something today that would cause me endless struggles with my moral concepts.

The emergency room was already crowded when I started working at 7 am. It’s the last weekends that allow for skiing and snowboarding. Snow has fallen a lot during the week and…

Once upon a time, in a country not too far away, in a town so small, you would barely even notice it, there was a nurse named Elise.

Elise was — at least that’s how her friends and those who knew her would have described her — quite ordinary. She lived in an ordinary apartment, she worked in an ordinary hospital, and there had never been any scandal, the smallest bit of rumor about her.

But, and few people knew this, and those who did would never tell: Elise was anything but ordinary. …

When you start working in the medical field, no matter if you are a physician, a nurse, or a student, you will be confronted with humanity in a whole different format.

While you might have studied the most complicated diseases and while you might have understood the complex physiology of the human body, I don’t think anyone is ever prepared for what caring for others really means.

Suddenly, it is your job to care for very sick patients in their final moments. Suddenly, you have integrated into the intimacy of total strangers. …

It’s a very average morning on a very average ICU in a very average hospital, somewhere in Germany. While the rest of the world might be under the impression, that the infection with the Corona Virus is the only life-threatening disease these days, that’s of course not true.

On our ward, people are suffering from cancer, hepatitis, autoimmune diseases, and more.

While the new virus is overshadowing the year 2020, other sicknesses have not stopped.

I have been doing my internship on this very average ward in this very average hospital for about four weeks now and I am already…

An undefeatable superhero. His mission? To save the world from an unknown villain. Danger. Mystery. Tension. And, of course, there is also the girl.

Everybody has seen the movies about the Secret Intelligence Service Agent James Bond, better known by his code number 007. He is a heavy smoker, consumes large amounts of alcohol, and yes, sometimes he is a sexist. Yet, we all know that he is a good guy.

If we break it down to what the story around James Bond is actually about, we can wrap it up in one sentence: An agent is called on an…

“Mrs. S., come with me please.” An older woman gets up from one of the uncomfortable chairs in the waiting area. Underneath my mask, I try to give her a welcoming smile. It has been a difficult year for all of us and the waiting area in the emergency room is definitely not the place to be in this ongoing pandemic.

I guide her to one of our examination rooms. She must be a little over 80 years old. Of course, she came by herself. …

Sophie Trelles-Tvede was only 18 years old when she accidentally came up with what was soon to be a multi-million dollar idea.

In her first year of college, she was getting dressed for “Bad Taste Party” organized by a student union — while her outfit was already on point, she had no time to style her hair. As a joke, she ripped out the spiral cable of an old disused telephone hanging on her dorm-wall and used it to tie up her hair in a messy bun.

When she woke up the next day, tired and feeling groggy, her hair…