Rolling like a strange red carpet
Adrianne is freshly married to a medic, and she feels that the future is bright. In the first week of marriage, they proceeded on a honeymoon, and everything was like a fairy tale to Adrianne because the love she felt for her husband could not be measured. When Cullen goes to work in the morning, Adrianne waves goodbye, and she is full of expectations. The author writes, "Adrianne waved goodbye, and she felt the future rolling out before her like a strange red carpet." Unfortunately, All that glitters is not gold because later in life, the marriage took a wrong trajectory and ended up in separation.
Impeding death like a black car
The rule of 9s applied by nurses when attending to burnt victims is shocking, and Cullen takes advantage of that assumption to kill most of his patients. According to the rule of 9s, a patient aged 50 with fifty percent burns in his body is already dead. Cullen believes such patients are as good as dead, like a black car you see in your rear mirror. The author writes, "The impending death is like a black car you see in the rearview mirror, always there if you look." In reality, such patients have higher chances of survival if well taken care of, but Cullen uses the rule of 9s to overdose his patients to kill them, arguing that he is reducing their suffering.
Thinning like a constant rolling pin
Charles Cullen is attending to children with scars on their bodies due to various burns. Charles knows that these children can survive despite leading miserable lives in the future. Charles thinks he is doing these children favors when he comes up with a strategy of ending their lives prematurely by using suit pressure to thin their skin. The process of thinning the children's scars is very painful, and the author describes it using a simile. The author writes, "The suit presses against the scars, thinning them, like constant rolling pin against the hard rising tissue." Charles thinks that the world is unfair to give these children a chance to live, and he believes that the purpose of the suit presser is to end lives.
