The Duchy of Jerald

Virtue Signaling & Hard Luck Rivalry
These are the aspects of the really horrible people that I found myself meeting in hospital. I
suppose they are narcissists. Narcissists love working in and being in hospitals, because people
don’t stay long enough to get to know and see the real them. Of course they have a steady source
of victims, aka patients, to pretend to care for, so they look good, in most cases. They hate not
looking good.
So on top of an illness you have the let down of being consequently conned, pretty much
constantly.
The first words out of their mouths, typically are, ‘How are you’. It’s done automatically, a
virtue signaling, so that all within earshot would know their supposed virtue. At first, because I
was distracted with being ill and recovering, I answered the question at face value, I mean I was
speaking to a medical or psychological professional (they are the worst). As I became less self
absorbed by growing used to my situation, I could see that these folks were always self absorbed,
always ill.
So, despising bullies the way I do, I would change it up, and so call on them to focus on their
patient, which caused much anxiety and hostility. Answers such as, ‘Well, I had a stroke’, really
fucked them up, especially because I was living on a neuro acute care ward for six months
because I, you know, had a severe stroke. They simply were not equipped emotionally to deal
with someone else’s trauma, and hated being called on to do so, and risk showing their true
colours.
Eventually I stopped answering. Rarely did they notice as they were all about signaling their
virtue and there was no way they were getting into the patients hard luck rivalry for care and
attention. Definitely a second class second choice. So not answering them was a kindness of
sorts, because they were not equipped for the answer.
There was one guy who took my no answer as a cause of concern. Not that he cared about the
answer but he needed some kind of answer for his agenda. ‘Well, when I feel that way, I talk to
my Lord Jesus Christ’. Oh Christ.
It turned out that most of these nurses and para what have yous, were big into the church, a
source of irony in a bastion of science and evidence based medicine. By ‘big into’ I mean it in