Doctor Humiliates Black Nurse in Front of Patient, Unaware of Who the Patient Really Is…

 

In an affluent suburb where clean sidewalks curled like ribbons past manicured hedges, St. Mary’s General Hospital stood with the self-confidence of an old photograph: framed perfectly, lit just so, and widely admired by those who never looked too closely. Its mission statement gleamed in brass near the main entrance. Its awards glittered along a corridor that smelled faintly of lemon cleaner and pride. Everyone said St. Mary’s was “a model institution.”

On a winter morning that felt more brittle than cold, a patient named Thomas Edwards was wheeled through the sliding glass doors. He was middle-aged, composed, and wrapped in pain and plaster. Both arms had been broken in a skiing accident. Nurses joked that he looked like a general whose medals had become casts. He said little. He watched a lot. He listened more.

He would prove to be the listener who mattered.

And somewhere else in the building, on the same morning, a new nurse named Angela Parker took a breath big enough for a beginning.

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Chapter 1: Angela Walks In

The light in St. Mary’s lobby was unforgiving, the kind that made glass vanish and steel show every fingerprint. Angela paused a single heartbeat just inside the doors, tilted her chin up, and felt the old discipline slide into place. Shoulders squared. Smile ready. The habits she had learned to armor herself while being warm. She thought of how many entrances like this she had already walked through—classrooms, clinics, exam halls where eyes weighed her the way scales weigh fruit.

Her shoes clicked across polished tile that held a faint reflection of her—dark skin, careful bun, the quiet alertness that patients often mistook for calm. She approached the nurses’ station, where a chatter of voices stopped mid-sentence. Eyes fell to screens. Pens hovered. The energy gathered itself into a silence that Angela knew too well: the silence that says We’re watching, and, sometimes, We’re hoping you’ll fail before we have to say why we expected you to.

“Excuse me,” she said, gentle and steady. “I’m Angela Parker, the new nurse. Could you direct me to the head nurse’s office?”

A blonde nurse looked up with a courteous smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Down the hall. Third door on the right.” The voice was polite; the coolness was unmistakable.

“Thank you,” Angela replied, and the words felt heavier than they should have, as if gratitude itself had to push through a door being held only half open.

On the way down the corridor, the hospital made its own introductions—the staticky whisper of the PA system, the antiseptic tang of disinfectant, the low hum of machines that charted the body’s private weather in green lines and beeps. Angela took it all in and let a small exhale carry away the stomach-knots. You’ve done harder things, she reminded herself. Do your job. Keep your chin up. Earn your allies. Spot your enemies early and refuse to be their story.

A tall man in a white coat stepped from an exam room ahead. He had salt-and-pepper hair that would photograph well and a posture shaped by being deferred to. He glanced at Angela the way one measures distance.

“Good morning, Doctor,” Angela said, with the same ready smile she offered every physician until they taught her otherwise. “I’m Angela Parker, the new nurse. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

His mouth did not consider a smile. “Dr. William Greaves.” His tone made the words a business card dropped on a desk. “We maintain very high standards at St. Mary’s. I trust you’ve been properly oriented to our protocols.”

Before she could answer, he angled past her, white coat flaring slightly, footsteps brisk enough to mean we’re done here. The corridor felt colder when he left.

Angela waited a heartbeat, lifted her hand back to her side, and continued. A familiar ache rose in her chest—part disappointment, part memory. She opened the head nurse’s door with a knuckle’s knock and walked in.

“Miss Parker?” The head nurse was a woman carved from experience and schedules. “We have a lot to cover. Try to keep up.”

“I will,” Angela said. She would. She always did.

Chapter 2: The Weight of First Impressions

Orientation days were meant to be a blend of welcome and checklist. At St. Mary’s they felt like proof. Angela drifted from lecture to tour to paperwork with the fluid efficiency that had earned her top marks in school. But there was something else running alongside the forms and instructions—the sideways looks, the whispered recalibrations when she entered a room, the conversations that thinned into threads and picked back up once she passed.

In the supply room a nurse she hadn’t met yet brushed by her and murmured, “Excuse me,” so faintly the word nearly apologized for itself, then continued a conversation at normal volume two steps later. At lunch, a cluster of nurses offered a brief smile that didn’t expand into an empty seat. Angela ate at a small table near the window and texted her mother a photo of the courtyard fountain. First day. Pretty place, she wrote. She did not add, and already lonely.

After shift-change, while Angela cleared her locker, two voices unspooled around the corner.

“Did you see the new hire?” one asked.

“Yeah,” said the other. “I don’t know what they were thinking. This isn’t exactly the neighborhood for, you know…”

The phrase trailed off, like a cough that didn’t need to finish to be understood. Angela’s hand froze on the locker door. She pressed her lips together until the sting in her eyes receded.

On the bus stop bench, the plastic felt colder than the air. She called home. “Hey, baby girl,” her mother answered, voice warm as a quilt.

“It was… challenging, Mama,” Angela said, keeping her tone light. The word challenging stood there, neat and folded, covering what it needed to cover.

“Angela Marie Parker.” Her mother’s voice softened and strengthened at once. “You worked too hard to let anyone make you feel less than. Remember who you are and where you come from. Every time you walk those halls, you’re holding the door for a little Black girl who’ll walk them after you. Don’t let them see you sweat. You hear me?”

Angela closed her eyes against the city blur and breathed her mother’s strength in like oxygen. “I hear you.”

A sleek black Mercedes slowed at the curb, its tinted window a mirror with secrets. For a second, she saw Dr. Greaves’s profile. He looked right at her—a glance that assessed, dismissed, and moved on. The car glided away. Angela straightened. Tomorrow would come. So would she.

Chapter 3: Tests Without Names

Over the next weeks, exclusion refined itself into a craft. It arrived as smiles that were half-degree too small, as assignments calibrated to exhaust, as compliments tied to leashes. It looked like colleagues drifting into easy camaraderie with one another and stepping around Angela the way a river divides around a rock. It looked like charts reassigned at the last minute, like schedules that bent in one direction.

“Nurse Parker,” called Dr. Greaves one morning across the station, using the volume one reserves for public correction and theatrical praise. “I trust you’re fully familiar with our protocols by now. We can’t afford mistakes.”

He pressed on the word mistakes as if it were a bruise. Heads turned. Pens paused. Angela met his eyes for the length of two steady heartbeats.

“Of course, Doctor,” she said. “I’m fully versed in hospital procedures.” She left it at that. She had learned a long time ago how easily conviction, when spoken by a Black woman, could be labeled attitude.

“We’ll see,” he murmured, letting the words travel just far enough.

Angela found herself assigned to the patients with the shortest fuses and the longest charts. When a colleague said, with the sugar of faux concern, “Would you mind taking Mr. Johnson in 305? He’s been a bit challenging today,” Angela knew challenging meant hostile and unkind. She also knew the request was less a request and more a design.

She knocked and stepped into 305. Mr. Johnson’s face tightened at the sight of her. “I told them I don’t want no colored nurse touching me.”

Angela kept her eyes on his chart and her voice steady. “Mr. Johnson, I’m here to check your vitals and change your dressing. I’ll be careful.”

The names he called her did not belong in any daylight. She performed her tasks with the care she gave to every patient, her hands moving the way they had been trained to move—precise, gentle, unfaltering. The wound did what wounds do when treated well: it looked better than when she’d arrived.

Outside, Dr. Greaves leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, concern arranged carefully on his face. “Everything all right in there? We heard quite a commotion.”

“Mr. Johnson’s vitals are stable. Dressing changed.” Angela kept her tone professional.

“Let’s hope you maintain that composure with all your patients,” he said. “We wouldn’t want any complaints.”

He strode off. The comment hung in the air like an odorless gas—meant to be invisible, meant to linger.

That evening, Angela gathered her bag under the same drizzle of whispers as on her first day. “Diversity hires,” someone said, not quite under their breath. “You know how that goes.”

She closed her locker without a clatter. Leaving the hospital, she saw the black Mercedes again. The driver’s window slid down just enough. “Waiting for the bus again, Nurse Parker? Shame,” came the voice. Then the car moved. Humiliation is a heat that hides under the skin. Angela felt it, then refused to carry it home. She carried only her mother’s words.

Chapter 4: The VIP

Hospitals vibrate differently when someone important is coming. The air sharpens. Lists lengthen. Voices quicken. St. Mary’s felt that hum the morning Thomas Edwards arrived—casted arms, careful movements, an alertness in his eyes that registered both pain and everything else. He asked few questions and noticed many things.

“Nurse Parker,” said Dr. Greaves, tone clipped. “You’ll handle the new admission in 412. Mr. Thomas Edwards. Both arms broken. He is to receive the utmost care.”

The utmost was another test wrapped as trust. Angela nodded. “Of course, Doctor.”

Ward 412 held a quiet that felt earned, not empty. Angela introduced herself. “Mr. Edwards, I’m Nurse Angela Parker. I’ll be taking care of you during your stay.”

His gaze was direct and curious, the way some people look at a painting and some people look at a mirror. “Thank you, Nurse Parker. I appreciate it. The skiing was less graceful than advertised.”

As she checked vitals and notes, he studied her with the attention of a person who has read many rooms and learned to believe what he sees more than what he’s told.

“You seem very competent,” he said lightly. “How long have you been at St. Mary’s?”

“A few weeks,” Angela replied, tone even. “It’s been… educational.”

Before he could ask what she meant, Dr. Greaves arrived with a smile so broad it might have been mistaken for warmth from across the room. “Mr. Edwards,” he exclaimed, “I trust Nurse Parker is meeting your needs. We assign our best staff to our most distinguished patients.”

Angela did not blink. Our best had not been the category she’d been placed in until this moment. Mr. Edwards glanced between them, filing away the discrepancy with a slight nod.

“Indeed,” he said. “She’s been exemplary.”

When Dr. Greaves left, the air reset itself. Over the next days, Angela returned to 412 often—because the chart required it, and because the room felt like a place where performance was not expected of her. Edwards asked about her background, what drew her to nursing, what she found most challenging. He listened in a way that made space. Angela, who was careful with her words, found herself offering a few more than usual.

Outside the door one afternoon, she caught voices coiling like smoke. “I don’t care what Dr. Greaves says,” a nurse hissed. “I don’t trust that Parker woman with our VIP. Who knows what she’ll do.”

“If we say anything, they’ll call us racist,” another replied, the word they doing its familiar heavy lifting.

Inside, Angela’s palms stilled on a roll of gauze. She resumed the dressing change. She tucked the tape with the tidy pressure that makes things hold.

“Is everything all right?” Edwards asked, catching the change in her breathing the way sailors catch small winds.

“All good,” Angela said, and smiled. He watched her for a moment longer, then spoke as if to the room.

“I’ve always believed a person’s character shows in how they treat those they imagine are beneath them,” he said quietly. “Leadership begins at the bedside.”

The words settled. Angela nodded once. She left 412 with a steadier spine.

Chapter 5: The Knife’s Edge

Hospitals are machines keyed to crisis. The day of the emergency operation arrived with that bright, thin tension that makes even jokes land harder and softer at once. Rumors ran: the case was complicated, the observers important, the stakes unusually high.

“Nurse Parker,” Dr. Greaves said, voice neutral in the way of someone trying not to broadcast delight. “You’ll assist in the operation this afternoon. Critical case.” He leaned toward another doctor as he turned away. “Let’s see how she handles the pressure.”

Angela scrubbed in. Gloves snapped. Masks hid the expressions people didn’t want to share and revealed the ones they couldn’t help—eyes that squinted with skepticism, widened with stress, twitched with judgment. She took her place with the same quiet focus she always carried into an OR, the kind that made time go from marching to flowing.

She worked fluidly—anticipating instruments, double-checking counts, keeping the sterile field as uncompromising as a vow. As the surgery progressed, success narrowed into a few crucial movements. The patient’s anatomy presented a variation just unusual enough to trip ordinary instinct. Angela saw Dr. Greaves’s hand hesitate, a tremor’s suggestion in the scalpel’s tip.

“Doctor,” she said, clear and steady, “we may want to approach from a different angle. The anatomy suggests it’s safer.”

Silence clicked into the room like a new soundtrack. Everyone looked up with only their eyes. For an instant, anger lit Dr. Greaves’s features like a match struck in the dark. Then—because he could not afford failure under observation, because she might be right, because the room was watching—he made the adjustment.

The next minutes unspooled toward success. Blood pressures steadied. Lines smoothed. A small future was protected because someone dared to speak in the single second when it mattered most.

When the door opened and the OR breathed again, respect and resentment traveled on the same air. A few nods met Angela’s gaze. A few glances slid away. Dr. Greaves removed his gloves with movements that made the latex sound like torn paper.

“Nurse Parker,” he said, voice low. “Now.”

He led her down the corridor and shouldered open a door—412. In her focus on surgery, Angela had let the hospital blur; only when the door swung shut did she realize they were in Thomas Edwards’s room.

“How dare you question my judgment,” Dr. Greaves hissed. A measured rage sharpened his consonants. “Your job is to follow orders, not imagine you know better than your superiors. This is exactly why people like you don’t belong at St. Mary’s. You’re here because somebody wanted a checkbox. Don’t mistake that for skill.”

The words came fast now, each carving a notch: people like you, don’t belong, checkbox. Angela felt a familiar cold descending—the kind that accompanies public humiliation, the body’s way of dimming the pain by turning down the room.

Before she could answer, another voice cut the air cleanly.

“That will be enough, Doctor.”

Thomas Edwards was awake, upright, and looking at Greaves with an authority that did not need volume. The room rearranged itself around him.

“I’ve been awake long enough,” Edwards said, “to observe how you speak to this nurse—and how you’ve treated her since I was admitted. It ends now.”

Greaves’s face paled, then flushed, then hovered in between like a malfunctioning light. “Mr. Edwards, I… there’s been a misunderstanding.”

“There has not,” Edwards replied. “But there is a misunderstanding I should correct. Do you know who I am?”

Greaves swallowed. “You’re… a patient.”

“I’m Thomas Edwards,” he said evenly. “CEO of Healthcare United—one of the largest healthcare systems in this country.”

The sentence remodeled the room. The walls seemed closer. The air felt thinner.

“And I do not intend,” Edwards continued, “to support institutions where racism and unprofessionalism threaten patient care and staff dignity. Consider this your notice that a reckoning has arrived.”

Greaves opened his mouth and closed it again. The knock at the door came like a cue. “Doctor,” a nurse said from the threshold, eyes flicking between the men, “the administrator needs you. Urgently.”

“We’ll continue this later,” Greaves muttered, but it was a line from a play whose script had just been rewritten.

He left. The silence that followed was not empty. It was full of the kind of relief that makes a person sit down before they fall.

Chapter 6: Names and Leverage

“Please,” Edwards said, gesturing to a chair, voice softened now. “Sit, Nurse Parker.”

Angela lowered herself as if surrendering weight she’d been holding for too many days. She met his gaze, searching for the catch that had accompanied every other kindness lately. There wasn’t one.

“I suppose introductions are in order,” he said. “As I mentioned, I run Healthcare United. I didn’t plan to be here. But accidents don’t ask permission, and this one brought me to your hospital. I’ve seen a lot—from this bed, from the hallways, from the way people reveal themselves when they think the only witness is a nurse who can be ignored or a patient who doesn’t matter.”

He listened as Angela spoke, as she described the first greeting that wasn’t, the assignments that were tests disguised as trust, the way bigotry here never wore a hood but always had a face. He didn’t interrupt. He asked a few questions that made it clear he believed her before he asked them.

“Your resilience is extraordinary,” he said at last, “but resilience is not a policy. It is not a plan. It should never be the condition for your survival at work.”

A rap sounded at the door. The hospital administrator entered, posture apologetic, smile stretched thin. “Mr. Edwards,” she said, “we—of course—take these matters very seriously.”

“Do you?” Edwards asked, not unkindly, but without the cushioning politeness often used to keep hard truths soft. “Because what I’ve observed is a culture that has learned to perform excellence while excusing cruelty. Here is what will happen next.”

He laid it out: an independent investigation into discriminatory practices; mandatory, high-quality diversity and inclusion training with real accountability; a review and overhaul of hiring and promotion processes; transparent reporting; and, pending investigation, the suspension of Dr. Greaves for unprofessional and discriminatory conduct—conduct that also nearly compromised a patient’s safety.

The administrator blinked, then nodded in small, frightened movements. “We’ll begin immediately.”

“Good,” Edwards said, and the syllable landed with the finality of a sealed envelope. “And one more thing. Nurse Parker’s insight and experience will be central to these reforms.”

Angela felt a heat rise behind her eyes—the kind that comes not from pain but from the sudden possibility that fair might be more than a word.

Chapter 7: The Auditorium

Change in hospitals is both swift and slow. That week, it looked like news vans outside and whispers inside, like a corridor where a doctor who once smirked now kept his eyes on his shoes, like a suspension letter delivered by HR while the rumor mill began to run hot. Angela walked through it with the same measured gait she carried everywhere. Colleagues who had turned away now turned toward her, their smiles unsure, their apologies awkward.

When the PA announced an emergency all-staff meeting, the auditorium filled to its seams. Angela took a seat near the back and felt the attention in the room ripple toward her like heat shimmer.

On stage, the administrator stood to the side while Thomas Edwards stepped to the podium in a dark suit and two white casts. The sight might have been comic if the room weren’t so still.

“For those who don’t know,” he began, voice firm and unhurried, “I am Thomas Edwards, CEO of Healthcare United. I have been your patient.” He let the sentence sit, unadorned, a fact with its own weight. “During my stay, I observed behavior that violates not just decency but safety. I witnessed the treatment of Nurse Angela Parker. Let me be clear: what happened here is not an isolated incident. It is the symptom of a system that prefers its image to its integrity.”

He outlined the plan he had shared in 412, now formal and public. Then he added what many did not expect but some had hoped: “Those who engaged in discriminatory conduct will face consequences. Dr. William Greaves is suspended pending a full investigation.”

The room stirred. Loyalty and relief split into factions anyone could read on faces. Edwards let the murmurs crest and fall.

“Change is always inconvenient to those who benefit from the status quo,” he continued. “But change is our only path to the excellence this hospital claims. We will build a place worthy of your patients and of you.”

Finally, he turned slightly and extended his hand toward the wings. “Angela Parker will serve as St. Mary’s Chief Diversity Officer, leading these reforms.”

Sound rose, a tide of applause punctured by pockets of silence. Angela walked to the stage because her name had been called. She did what she always did when entering a room that might not want her there: she met it on her feet.

“I’m not here as an adversary,” she said into the microphone. Her voice was calm, sturdy. “I’m here as your colleague. We will disagree. We will be uncomfortable. We will learn. And we will do better—for each other and for our patients. That’s the work. I’m committed to it.”

For a moment, St. Mary’s looked back at her the way a person looks into a mirror that tells the truth. She stepped away from the podium and into the job.

Chapter 8: The Middle of Change

The months that followed were busy enough to make sleep feel like a hobby. Policies were rewritten with language that meant something and teeth that could bite. Training that once checked boxes now opened eyes. Mentorship networks were designed so nobody had to navigate alone. Hiring panels diversified. Promotion criteria were clarified. Whispered slurs went from bold to rare to gone, at least in public. Reporting channels became safer than rumor and faster than resentment.

There were missteps. There always are. Resistance arrived dressed as tradition, as budgetary prudence, as fatigue, as Why can’t we just focus on patients? Angela learned to answer without condescension and refuse to back away from the truth. Focusing on patients meant focusing on staff, because healthy systems heal better than sick ones.

Investigators completed their report. Dr. Greaves was dismissed. The message carried farther than the man himself ever had.

The hospital’s mood changed like a season—first subtly, then everywhere. Nurses new to St. Mary’s arrived and described a place that had welcomed them into its social bloodstream rather than treating them like a graft. Doctors asked better questions of themselves and each other. Patients noticed a difference they couldn’t quite name and turned it into higher trust and better outcomes.

Angela’s phone began to vibrate with invitations—to present at regional meetings, then national conferences, to consult, to advise. She accepted a handful because she had learned to pace herself, and because leaving the hospital too often made the work here feel distant. Still, she understood the momentum that had been set loose: when a culture shifts in one place, others can no longer pretend the work is impossible.

Chapter 9: One Year Later

The ballroom of the national healthcare conference smelled like coffee and ambition. Angela stood at the lectern before a wall of faces and thought, for one private heartbeat, about the bus stop bench on her first day. She spoke without theatrics, the way truth sometimes asks to be spoken.

“A year ago,” she began, “I was a nurse ready to give up. Today, I stand here because a patient listened, because a hospital decided its image wasn’t enough, and because too many people had endured too much for too long.”

She told St. Mary’s story without naming villains beyond the systems that had made them comfortable. She spoke of the night in the OR, of the moment in 412, of the meeting in the auditorium. She spoke, too, of the quieter victories: a nurse who now wanted to stay, a resident who apologized and meant it, a unit whose turnover fell by half, a patient satisfaction measure that rose because dignity has clinical effects.

When the crowd disperses after talks like that, there’s always a line. Some came to thank her. Some came to argue kindly about methods. Some came because standing near a story that has heat can warm you. Angela listened. She took notes. She promised to share templates and did.

Later, in the corridor that smelled faintly of whiteboard markers and printing ink, Thomas Edwards, fully recovered, found her with a smile shaped by pride and relief.

“You’ve come a long way,” he said.

“So has St. Mary’s,” Angela replied.

“So have we all,” he added, and it didn’t sound like flattery. It sounded like arithmetic.

He told her that several hospitals within Healthcare United had adopted similar programs, that early data was encouraging, that resistance had been, as expected, vocal and then less so.

“None of this happens,” he said, “without your courage in the face of ugliness and your insistence on structure in the face of chaos.”

Angela shook her head. “None of it happens without your decision to use power for repair.”

They both knew they were both right.

Chapter 10: Home Ground

Back at St. Mary’s, the lobby looked the same—same fountain, same brass plaque, same light too bright for comfort. The change was in the currents. Colleagues who had once avoided her now sought her out for counsel and companionship. At the nurses’ station, laughter included her, and sometimes started there. In the staff lounge, the bulletin board advertised mentorship coffees, peer-support circles, and a seminar series on bias in diagnostics that filled up in an afternoon.

In the main corridor, a mural stretched twelve feet of color and care: a team of healthcare workers—varied in race, age, gender—bending together over work that mattered. Beneath it, a plaque read: Diversity is our strength. Inclusion is our commitment. Compassion is our calling.

Angela stood in front of it one morning and let herself feel what she usually stored for late at night: the awe of watching a place become more itself by changing, the quiet joy of seeing a vision escape paper and turn into practice. She took a photo and sent it to her mother with three words: We did it.

In her office—Chief Diversity Officer, St. Mary’s General Hospital—Angela organized her day. Meetings. A walk-through with Facilities to review signage translations. A lunch with new hires to hear their first impressions before those impressions fused into dogma. A call with a hospital three states away ready to begin a similar journey. She still worked shifts on the floor once a month, a promise to herself that leadership would never make her forget the rhythm of the bedside.

Near closing time, Edwards stopped by the lobby on his way to a board meeting across town. They stood near the mural for a moment without speaking.

“This was never just about St. Mary’s,” he said finally.

“No,” Angela agreed. “But it had to start somewhere.”

They shook hands, both a little amused at the formality—he with hands once casted, she with hands that had once trembled only in private.

“Get some rest when you can,” he advised, an executive’s version of care.

“I’ll sleep when the job is smaller,” she said, smiling.

“Then take a nap,” he replied, and they both laughed.

Epilogue: What the Witness Saw

Hospitals forget slowly. They remember better when someone writes it down. In the months after St. Mary’s shook itself awake, the story of a Black nurse who refused to bend and a patient who revealed the leverage he had spread beyond the hospital walls. Not because it was sensational—though there were days when the press treated it like a spectacle—but because it was instructive.

A physician who had once watched Angela cross a corridor like a test now crossed the same corridor to ask her how to redesign his residency curriculum. A nurse who had once whispered replaced whispering with action, then apology, then changed behavior. An administrator who had once hidden behind policy learned to write policy that refused to be a hiding place.

As for Angela, she still kept her mother’s words within easy reach. On mornings when her inbox bristled or a meeting ran hotter than it should, she’d step into an empty conference room for sixty seconds, close her eyes, and hear: You’re not just there for yourself. Hold the door open. Don’t let them see you sweat. Then she would go back out and get on with it, sweat and all, because the work was not a performance; it was a practice.

And somewhere in the hospital—any hospital, really—there would always be a patient watching quietly, noticing who was dismissed and who was defended, who had authority and how they used it. The witness matters. Sometimes, the witness has power. Sometimes, the witness is the power.

At St. Mary’s, the witness had a name: Thomas Edwards. And thanks to a nurse named Angela Parker, the witnessing turned into change that could be measured—in policy, in practice, in outcomes, and in the way people looked at one another in hallways bright enough to show everything.