Failure – The Nurse Who Loved Me lyrics

I am a little surprised at how much folks are reading their own lives into this song. I see it in a very literal sense. It seems to me the whole thing is just describing an episode of awareness of a patient in a psych ward. The opening lines describing how interesting a rug looks when you are face down on it, most likely he had to be sedated after a violent episode and he comes awake face down on a rug, where the song picks up his story. In his delusional state, he sees the nurse as being infatuated with him. She is the one bright spot, dressed in white, in his otherwise horrible life. She has the keys to the pharmacy and brings him the pills in the little cups that make him feel better. The "apples on the ground" probably reference blood specks he's sneezed out from falling face down after being sedated. Of course the "shrinking in your head" is a classic reference to "head shrinkers" as Psychiatrists are colloquially often called. I personally find the song touching because the melancholy melody elicits feelings of sympathy for this poor mental patient.

I see it as a story about a patient in an asylum or psyche ward.
The apples symbolize both life and blood. Gone from her eyes, and bleeding out to the rug.
"...everything you've left behind" could mean freedom. I'm not too sure about this. Since she's trying to "free" the patients from their "sickness," maybe she's "free" as a ghost so she "can't touch freedom" or cannot touch the subject of the patients being or getting "free" from their conditions.
In my imagination, the nurse is probably doing bad things to the patient. That's why the patient made her "apples" spill on the ground. :)

The first line seems to be about having fallen down with your face on the rocks, literally
shrinking in your head would seem to be an existential type of drug reference, not that people don't unknowingly recede in their heads without drugs sometimes
falling in "love" with a chick who's got access to drugs
drug access being the main portion of the attraction
the lady acting like a nurse with the other guys means she doesn't particularly flirt or any of that with anyone else. She saves the drugs & s* for singer dude
the apples on the ground to me is wasted potential or squandered capability
probably due to drug use and just general wasting of time
you don't know what you have until you lose it, so "it's even more a part of your life now that you can't touch it"
Annnd that about sums it up
Failure is truly an awesome, way underappreciated/ far-too-unknown band, and anyone who digs any sort of awesome modern rock and/or roll should go to the store and pick up "Fantastic Plaet" as soon as you can. Some of the member have gone on to form/ perform in Year of the Rabbit, Autlox, On, Campfire Girls, The Replicants, A Perfect Circle and also Queens of the Stone Age.

Does nobody else notice that it doesn't say "shrinking in your head" above, it says "shaking in your hand"? Most other sites have the former and not the latter, and most of the "explanations" here ignore the line in the above transcript. The "Fantastic Planet" copy that I used to own was dubbed so I don't know if the lyrics were printed on the inside of CD sleeve, but I've always thought, as it would seem, correctly, that the lyric is "shrinking in your head"; however the line printed here, "shaking in your hand", is actually better, imho (I've always wanted to use that cliche'd abbreviation. Score!), as it would be a reference to the side effect of many psychoactive and stimulant drugs, as well as a symptom of the withdrawal syndrome of pretty much anything, really; and it also may be a "tell" for, in addition to the use of the just-mentioned types of drugs, a variety of mental/neurological disorders, and would therefore fit nicely with the apparent theme of this song, which I personally can relate to for every reason I just mentioned, and because of my unfortunately and undeservedly recurring incarceration / institutionalization, which has turned out to be one of the predominant themes of the tragedy that I just call "my life" (and I am not - nor could I be because I was born in 1979 - in spite of what that last sentence might suggest if referring to a much younger [and therefore unqualified to portray themselves as so miserable] person, a f**king emo, or goth, or whatever you kids are calling it in modern times. (but I apparently am an old, curmudgeonly bastard. Thanks for listening, and if any of you don't know, Failure is supposed to release their first album in 18 years in 2015. Hell, maybe they already have - I wouldn't know since I don't keep up anymore, because, as you may remember from half a second ago, I'm a curmudgeon.

I would have to say that he is describing rehab. Saying hello to the rugs topography would be hitting bottom. The shaking in your hands would be withdraw. The pills take away his pain as he gets better but the nurse becomes the fixation because she is in control of the pills. Leaving rehab is when the apples are sneezed out. Say hello to everything you left behind is him trying to pick up where he left off but he has burnt bridges and can't "touch it". The last few verses describes his potential pill abuse and subsequent relapse. I love this band. Far more important than most music from their period.