The Night Shift

The fluorescent lights of the hospital corridor hummed at a frequency that made my teeth ache. Three years of night shifts had turned me into something resembling a **zombie**—pale, stumbling through routines, responding to emergencies with a detached efficiency that frightened even me.

"You look like hell," said Sarah, leaning against the nurses' station. She was my **friend**, the only person who could look past my hollowed eyes and see something worth saving. "Rough night?"

"Mr. Henderson in 304 coded again," I said, shaking a **vitamin** supplement from my pocket. The B12 was supposed to help with energy, but mostly it just stained my tongue yellow. "Third time this week. His daughter keeps asking if he's going to be okay for the father-daughter dance."

Sarah's face softened. She knew about the dance. She knew everything about my patients, just as I knew about hers. We'd survived code blues and family notifications together, held each other up through enough tragedy to fill a memoir.

"You still going to the game tomorrow?" she asked.

"**Baseball**," I nodded. "Got tickets behind home plate. Mark's bringing his kid."

"Good. You need this." She squeezed my hand. "You need to remember what it feels like to be alive."

That night, as I sat in the stadium watching players who embodied everything I'd lost—vitality, purpose, the sheer joy of movement—I understood what she meant. The crowd roared, and for the first time in months, something inside me stirred. A zombie learning to feel again.

Sarah was right. Sometimes you need someone to remind you that you haven't actually died yet.