Why does Eve risk her job? What events in her own life make her feel so strongly about helping Anna?

Eve risks her job at a time when she desperately needs it so as to help Anna and Luke - despite being told that to do so is wrong and harmful. Why? What events in her own life make her feel so strongly about helping Anna? What would you do?

Part of why Eve helps Anna is out of guilt. She could not help her husband in his hour of need and she regretted that. She wanted to help save Anna and Luke as redemption for her own misplaced guilt. She also liked Anna and wanted to help her. I think that in Eve's situation, where she had lost everything but Clem, she was more sensitive to loss and felt Anna's struggle more than Angus or Eric. Plus Anna asked for her help. How could she turn away? It would have felt like betrayal and a repeated mistake. It was her only option given her story. In her shoes, I would do the same.

I think that Eve felt betrayed by her husband. He was supposed to love her and take care of her and Clem and then he ended his own life because he couldn't deal with the fallout of his business dealings. Instead of people sticking up for her, everyone she knew turned their back on her. I think that she was sensitive to loss as the previous person said because of what had happened to her - she saw that Anna was losing so much and she wanted her to have a little bit of happiness in what was left of her life.

Eve certainly grabs us for the "heart" vote. She wants to do what she perceives as right. However, in a health care setting, it would be very dangerous for the staff (particularly the kitchen staff) to be making independent decisions about patient care. It is unlikely that Eve has any particular knowledge of the entire records of the two patients, and in an actual nursing facility setting, her actions could have needlessly put people in danger. While I loved her willingness to take a risk, I only loved it as it could occur in a novel. It wouldn't fly in a real-life setting.

This is where the story devolved a bit into unrealistic. I agree with maribethr that in a real life situation, a non-clinical staff member would have endangered the people involved, no matter her good intentions.

I think she had reached the point where she was unwilling to be held hostage by Eric for this job. Eric had used her, lied to her, been a real creep - and she was getting back on her feet enough to be fed up. She was willing to risk her job at this point because she was ready to have a spine again

Eve risks her job because she felt helpless when her husband committed suicide and doesn't want Anna to do it. Eve knows what effect it has on the people left behind.

Perhaps risked her job as atonement for her husband's suicide.

I cannot imagine why Eve had the job to begin with. She had no described qualifications to cook in a health care facility other than being a good cook. She had had great loss in her life with her husband's suicide and loss of her home and lifestyle, but she was emotionally unable to be in a place where she placed vulnerable people (Anna and Luke) at risk.

I agree with Louise E, Eve was devastated by her husband's suicide and angry about the toll it took on her daughter. She also felt guilt for her obliviousness to her husband's suffering and knew that she should have seen the signs that all was not well with him. As Maribeth R says, for someone to take that sort of responsibility on herself in a real-life situation could be disastrous. I thought the depiction helped the reader to understand the effect of her child's suffering on Eve, though. She became more willing to risk her own job and reputation to prevent similar suffering for Anna and Luke.

I think Eve got the job because Eric didn't care about safety measures or qualifications. She was desperate and agreed to do cleaning, too. He knew a good deal when he saw it. He probably figured that her lack of knowledge about protocol would let him get away with more, since she wouldn't notice.

I think on one hand she helps Anna out of guilt for her husbands suicide. But I also believe that Eve felt a strong bond to Anna. She took the time and the risk to make Anna happy. Maybe she needed to get a happy ever after ending to make herself feel better.

Maybe it also helped her feel life was not entirely out of control.

I like to feel that Eve sense there is woman in danger and need, and that the bond women can feel for other women and that mothering instinct that women have even if they have not given birth themselves in kicking in. Of course Even has sensed that Eric is creepy and a manipulator from the moment he tricked her on her job description, sensing that she was desperate as well.