Iworked like a machine.
It was the only way to forget.
My shoulders throbbed, and my feet ached from hours of standing and running.
But I had to keep going.
Xander’s crying kept flashing behind my eyes, and the only way to shut it out was to work myself numb.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew I couldn’t keep this up forever, but it was the only thing that had ever worked. For a long time, it did, though it drained the life out of me.
But now, it no longer worked, and I had no idea why.
Perhaps it was because Cameron had come into my life, distracting me and becoming my focus, my anchor. And then Harper, too.
They pulled me away from it.
The lights on the floor hummed quietly above me, casting that familiar, sterile glow over everything. My shift was supposed to end an hour ago, but I was still on the move, still working.
I didn’t want to go home yet.
Harper would be with Cameron tonight, and I didn’t want to be alone.
So I stayed. I checked charts that didn’t need checking, offered to take vitals the nurses had already covered, and found small tasks to do just to keep my hands busy—just to keep the silence at bay.
“Mrs. Adler’s pain meds are due in twenty,” one of the nurses reminded me as she passed.
“I’ve got it,” I said, already heading to the cart.
Then the man in 209 threw up his antibiotics. The woman in 214 still wouldn’t eat. The guy in 207 kept asking why he still had fevers, and I gave him the same answer I had given this morning, just with a little less patience in my voice this time.
I stopped outside 212 and glanced at the monitor. Vitals stable. I walked in, adjusted the woman’s IV, listened to her talk about her granddaughter’s dance recital, and nodded at the right moments. She fell asleep mid-sentence. I slipped out quietly.
I didn’t stop. Not when my stomach grumbled, reminding me I hadn’t eaten since morning. Not when the dull ache in my feet spread up my legs, begging for rest. I hadn’t even glanced at the clock. I didn’t want to.
Because here, in the middle of the controlled chaos, I knew what to do. Every task was straightforward, every steppurposeful. There was a rhythm to it, a steady pulse that kept me grounded.
And I wasn’t just a woman trying not to fall apart.
I didn’t know how I was still moving. My body felt heavy, as if I were wearing weights. My eyes burned. I hadn’t had water for hours. But I kept going.
Because stopping meant thinking, and I couldn’t afford that right now.
As long as I kept busy, I didn’t have to hear the echo of Xander’s crying in my head. I didn’t have to remember the way Cameron looked at me yesterday. I didn’t have to feel the pain sitting like a stone in my chest.
Helping other people made it easier to ignore the fact that I didn’t know how to help myself.
So I kept moving.
“Here you are.” Gabriel found me sitting alone on the glass balcony, a bottle of water in my hand—my first for today.
He walked over and sat beside me, and it took everything in me not to slide a few seats away.
I just needed to be alone.
I was trying my damnedest to figure out how not to think about everything, how to quiet the noise in my head, how to breathe without it hurting. And with him there, even if he meant well, it only made it harder.
“I’ve been looking for you,” he said.
