They always say never call it a quiet shift. That's the first rule. The second rule is: never get too comfortable.
It was just after 2 a.m., and the ER lights buzzed with that sterile hum that gets under your skin when you've been awake too long. The kind of hum that seeps into your bones, echoes off the tile floor, and makes you question if you're even alive or just some meat puppet running on adrenaline and guilt.
The euthanasia room still smelled like isopropyl and fur. A golden retriever had just died in my arms. Cancer. Stage four. The owners held him while he slipped away, crying like the world had just ended. I didn't cry, I don't cry at work anymore. Not since I realized no one gives a damn how much it eats you alive. They just want you to be calm, efficient, and compassionate, but not too compassionate, because then you're soft, weak.
The front desk rang again this time because a client was screaming about the wait time. A Pomeranian with bloat came in right after. Dead before we could intubate. The owners blamed us… Said we didn't act fast enough, that we didn't care enough. She said I looked tired, that I should've gone faster.
They weren't wrong. I was tired. I hadn't slept more than four hours in the last three days.
I washed my hands in silence. The water was too hot, scalding my skin. I didn't care. I wanted to feel something real.
**
I used to be in vet school.
That was before the diagnosis. Before I learned that the reason I always missed things in lectures, always second-guessed instructions, always had to reread every line in a textbook three times to make sense of it, wasn't because I was lazy, or stupid, or unmotivated.
Auditory processing disorder. Found out in my final year. Asked for help and all I got was a sympathetic nod and a list of things they couldn't do. "We're not equipped to handle that."
They let me drown in silence before they kicked me out when I failed my rotation.
No appeals, no support, no second chances. I lost everything. Thousands in debt, years wasted. And the worst part? I still wanted to help animals. Still wanted to matter in that world.
So I took a tech job in an ER clinic.
Burnout is a funny thing. It doesn't happen all at once. It creeps in. A slow leak of light until everything is dim and gray. You keep saying, "I'm just tired." "It's just a rough week." "I'll bounce back." Until you don't.
**
Somewhere around 4 a.m., I was kneeling on the floor trying to catheterize a seizing cat while a doctor barked orders over the sound of alarms. My hands were shaking. I couldn't hear him clearly; the words blurred together. That happens with auditory processing, something I can't control.
I said, "What?" three times.
He snapped. "Why can't you just listen?"
The shame hit harder than the seizing cat in my arms. My stomach turned.
**
I clocked out late. My scrubs were stained with fluids I couldn't name. I didn't even say goodbye to anyone. Just walked out the back door into the icy dawn, my skin too thin for the wind.
Home was just a place with four walls and dishes I hadn't touched in a week. I dropped my bag, didn't take off my shoes, and didn't feed the fish. Sat on the floor with my back against the kitchen cabinet. The silence was deafening.
I pulled out the bottle of sleeping pills that was left over from a dental extraction surgery kit. Not enough to make a scene, but just enough to make it quiet.
I wasn't trying to die. I just didn't want to be awake anymore.
**
I don't remember much after that.
A soft blur of sirens, a paramedic's voice, cold hands, the stick of an IV. I remember vomiting, and then nothing.
When I woke up, the light was flat and artificial, the bed was stiff, and my wrist had a hospital bracelet. The walls were the kind of off-white that makes you wonder if color ever existed.
A nurse walked in…Not the ER kind, the kind with blood on her shoes and bags under her eyes, but the calm, slow-moving kind.
"Hi, Mara. You're at Pinehurst Behavioral. You were brought here for observation. You're safe."
Safe.
God, I hated that word.
I wasn't safe. I was just... still here.
**
The days blurred.
The food was bland, and the furniture was bolted to the floor.
I didn't speak much in group. People talked about voices, about cutting, about trauma. I didn't know where I fit... I hadn't been abused, I hadn't gone to war, and I hadn't seen my parents die. I was just a failed vet student with a brain that didn't work the way it was supposed to.
I sat in the corner, nodded when asked things, and lied about how I was feeling. Said I was tired. Said I was fine.
I was lying, but no one called me on it. Not until he did.
The man with the gray in his beard and the eyes that didn't miss a thing.
Theo.
**
It was my fourth day when I found him in the rec room, thumbing through a puzzle book with the same kind of disinterest I had while staring at the TV that only played home renovation shows.
"You're not sleeping," he said without looking up.
I glanced at him. "Neither are you."
"The difference is, I don't pretend I am."
I raised an eyebrow. "You a shrink or something?"
He snorted. "Used to be. Doesn't do much good now."
I didn't reply. Just sat on the opposite couch.
"Vet tech, right?" he asked, finally looking at me.
I blinked. "How…"
"Your hands. They've got that look… Calloused, steady, but shaking when you think no one's watching."
I said nothing. But I didn't leave, either.
That was the beginning of whatever this was.
**
The truth is, I didn't want to die. I just wanted the noise to stop, the guilt, the pressure, and the feeling that I'd wasted my entire life chasing something that didn't want me back.
I didn't expect to still be here.
I didn't expect him either.
But here I was.
And maybe that was enough. For now.