NICK
The hospital is never truly quiet, despite what the pamphlets suggest. It simply shifts into a different register of noise.
At 9:17 PM, the air has the specific, stale quality of a building that has been breathing in the exhaustion of its staff for twelve hours.
Most people are running on their second wind, that brittle energy that appears once the first wind has been thoroughly exhausted.
I snapped my latex gloves off, a sharp, percussive sound that signaled the end of my second successful surgery of the day.
I rubbed the back of my neck, a ritual I've performed a thousand times without ever deciding to.
Success is a tedious baseline in my profession.
It's the minimum requirement. Anything less is a failure, and there is no "above." You either do the job correctly, or you don't.
Today, I had done it correctly. Twice.
I hadn't eaten since yesterday. My body was making a quiet, nagging accounting of the deficit, but I ignored it.
