“I get that, I do. But…I need you on your A-game. You’re my best nurse, and if you burn out, I’m screwed. Who’s gonna take your place? Lydia? Sally?”

We both know neither Lydia nor Sally are cut out for the ICU, not long term anyway. They’re both great nurses, but Lydia belongs somewhere like the L&D floor, and Sally is just too sweet and innocent for this work. The ICU is brutal. You have to care, and deeply, but you also have to keep a certain part of yourself walled off from it all. You have to be able to leave it all here when you clock out. Sally takes it home with her, I can tell.

“I’m not going to burn out. I promise.”

He just sighs. “Still. I’m going to have Lacey get the second half of your shift tomorrow covered. I’m not going to have my best nurse work three doubles in a row when we’re not short-staffed.”

“Alan—”

“No.” His pager, hanging inside the hip pocket of his scrub bottoms, buzzes, and he tilts it to check. “You work the morning shift, and then you go home and you have a glass of wine with lunch and you…I don’t know. Go for a walk. Binge Netflix. Whatever. Just take a few hours to breathe, Nadia. See you Thursday. I have to go.”

I hate time off.

I get antsy. Bored. Especially when Adrian is traveling.

I’ve worked crazy hours since I was a teenager, working full time after school and a second job on the weekends, so I could save up for my first car. Then I worked full time and went to nursing school, and then once I was a registered nurse I was working at least sixty hours a week supporting Adrian as he got his writing career off the ground. And now it’s just…habit. A lifestyle.

I call the elevator again and get on. The ride down to the parking garage is short, and the walk to my car long. It’s after midnight, and my eyes burn. I’m the kind of tired that leaves streaks at the edges of your vision, where time seems slow, syrupy and then way too fast, where it seems to take ten minutes to get into my A5, set my purse on the passenger seat, start the engine, and buckle up—and then I blink and I’m halfway home with zero memory of the drive. Then I’m waiting at a red light for an eternity, sitting at an empty intersection where the shops are closed and dark and the streets damp after a brief rain shower, making the traffic lights glint off the blacktop in a smear of red and green.