When My Shift Ends | ✓

final author's note

first of all, thank you so much for reading 'when my shift ends.' i know it wasn't always easy and often left a lot of people in tears (myself included) but thank you. it really means a lot to me.

now, i have a couple things i'd like to quickly address.

i know there are going to be some people annoyed by the ending, so let's start with that. there are a lot of books about cancer where the person dies. there are a lot of books about cancer where the person lives. both hold important meanings, and i wanted to write a story that included both. so i did.

there were some complaints about the realism of cooper's death, claiming that it shouldn't have happened like that. but from my experience, that's life. i got a call that my uncle wasn't going to make it through the night and as i was packing my bags to make the four and a half hour drive across the state, i received the call that he'd passed away only ten minutes later. life doesn't always give you a chance to have a big goodbye and that's why i wrote it like that.

i wanted cooper's death to be linked to him waking up from the surgery. as cooper progressively got worse in the dream, he was actually getting better and waking up. now, i know a lot of people may be mad at the whole "it was all a dream" thing, and i get it. but i did a lot of thinking and discussing with people, and it really felt right for the story. it's realistic. after doing loads of research, i found that people in surgery tend to have really vivid dreams because of the anesthesia they're under to keep them knocked out. i kept going back and forth between killing him and letting him live, until finally settling on both.

ultimately, it's my story. i wrote it. if you don't like the ending, imagine it however you'd like. but this is how i wanted it to end. because even though i'm a fan of realism, i'm also a fan of hope. i wanted people to feel the pain of his death and learn a lesson from that, but i also wanted there to be some hope that things can work out. because after all, this is a work of fiction and happy endings - which are really just new beginnings - do exist. still, i did research to be sure that the ending was as realistic as it could be.

speaking of research... i did a lot of it. i'm not an expert on medical stuff. in fact, i was horrible at science in school. even though i did a lot of research, i am human and i make mistakes. i apologize if i misrepresented anything in the story. i really did try my best to make this as realistic as i could, based on my own personal experiences and the research i conducted.

the final thing i want to talk about is the lesson of the story, because surprise there was a lesson i wanted everyone to take. the cool thing about art is that you interpret it however you'd like. i love that. i hope you guys took all sorts of things from the story. but there's one thing i really wanted to be clear and that's that you're alive.

i've got a heartbeat tattoo on my wrist that inspired me a lot during this story. i think, too often, people forget that they're actually alive. we get sucked up into these routines and forget to actually live. if anything, i hope this story reminds you to do something with your beating heart while you can. because you never know what life is going to throw at you. ask your crush out, try out for the volleyball team, go skydiving, etc. whatever it is you may be scared to do, do it. life is short.

i really hope you enjoyed the story. i hope it impacted you in some way. thank you again for reading, it really does mean a lot to me.

♡/ brittany