I make the cookies by the gross. The recipe is a Frankenstein's monster of a dozen others I’ve tweaked over the years —European butter, three times the vanilla the original recipe calls for, and just enough instant pudding mix to keep them soft for days. The real trick is letting the dough rest in the fridge for at least twenty-four hours to let the flavors get to know each other. I can’t eat that many myself (I'd discover Type III diabetes if I tried to, anyway), and bringing them here is better than any team-building exercise HR could dream up.
You could leave a tray of E. coli-tainted deli meat on the breakroom counter and it would vanish if it was free, but even I’m impressed by how fast the cookies disappear. Chloe took one, biting into it tentatively. Her eyes widened in reverence.
“Oh my God.”
“See? You’ll make it through the night.” I grabbed one for myself. “Alright, let’s go get our assignment from the boss.”
We walked back into the main department, the relative quiet of Fast Track giving way to the steady beeps and alarms of the acute side. Carly, our night-shift charge nurse, was standing at the main station, her back to us, on the phone with Admitting.
“...I don't care if you don't have a tele bed,” she said, her voice tight with frustration. “This one’s a ticking time bomb. Find one.” She hung up with a sharp click and turned, her eyes landing on us. She was a phenomenal nurse — sharp, quick, and technically skilled — but as charge, she wore her stress like armor, often coming across as prickly and dismissive.
“Finally,” she said. “I’ve got a real winner for you in Room 5. Fifty-two-year-old male, came in drunker than a lord — ”
“Hold that thought,” I interrupted, holding up the Tupperware container like a peace offering. “Cookie?”
Carly’s eyes narrowed, then darted to the container. A flicker of something other than stress crossed her face. Her shoulders slumped just a fraction.
“Dalton,” she sighed, a hint of a smile finally breaking through her tough exterior. She took a cookie, her eyes brightening as she took a bite. “I knew I loved you for a reason.” Sheleaned in and gave me a quick, one-armed hug before turning her attention to my shadow.
She sized up Chloe with a practiced, critical eye. “You must be the new meat. Chloe, right?” Chloe nodded, looking terrified.
Carly’s expression softened. “Well, if you have to be with a nurse preceptor, you could do a lot worse than Jimmy here,” she said, then turned back to me, a mischievous glint in her eyes. “Although, Jimmy, I'm surprised they let you precept again, after what happened to the last orientee. Oof.”
Chloe’s jaw practically hit the floor. I just laughed. “Does that joke ever get old?”
Carly put a hand on her chest in mock offense. “Absolutely not, how dare you ruin it early! You're supposed to at least pretend for a little bit!” She shook her head, then handed me the chart for Bay 5. “Now go deal with your drunken ankle pain so I can figure out where to put this chest pain. And save me another cookie for my 3 a.m. crisis.”
“You got it, boss.”
As Carly marched off to fight her next battle with the bed board, Chloe whispered, “What … what happened to the last orientee?”
I laughed. “Nothing, that’s just a joke that was old back when the old-timers used it onus,” I said, leading her toward Bay 5. “Nobody comes up with new jokes here, we just recycle the old ones until everyone who knows them is gone.”
The man in Bay 5 was exactly as advertised: loud, belligerent, and smelling faintly of stale beer and regret. For the next hour, I navigated the delicate art of de-escalation, a skill they don’t teach you in nursing school. It involved a lot of patient listening, a little bit of firm boundary-setting, and a well-timed offering of a turkey sandwich. By the time we discharged him, he was calling me his best friend and promising to name his firstborn son after me.
“How did you do that?” Chloe asked, looking bewilderedas she cleaned the room. “He was threatening to sue us ten minutes ago.”
“Most people, even the angry ones, just want to be heard,” I said, stripping off my gloves. “And never underestimate the persuasive power of a warm blanket and a free sandwich.”
That was the rhythm of the night shift. It wasn’t always dramatic life-or-death situations. More often than not, it was this: small acts of kindness, the quiet untangling of human messes, one patient at a time. It was holding the hand of a scared grandmother, explaining a diagnosis for the fifth time to a worried spouse, or just sitting with someone in the dark until the turkey sandwich worked its magic.
I settled in at the nurses' station to chart, the vast, quiet hours of the night stretching before us. This was my world — predictably unpredictable. And for now, it was enough. I had my crew, my cookies, and the steady, quiet satisfaction of knowing that, in this little pocket of fluorescent-lit chaos, I was making a difference.
chapter
three
The morning equipmentcheck was a sacred ritual at Station 2, and I ran mine like a military inspection. Every piece of gear had to be spotless, every tool in its designated place, every system tested and logged. We were forty-two hours into our shift now, but standards didn't slip on B-shift.
"Martinez, when's the last time that SCBA was decontaminated?" I asked, running my hand along the air bottle's housing.
"Last week after that garage fire on Maple, L.T.," he replied, pulling up the maintenance log on his tablet. "Full wash-down, dried, and inspected. Greco checked all the bottle dates this morning — we're all current through next quarter."
I nodded, checking the regulator connections myself.Trust but verify. "Thompson, how's that hose bed looking?"
"Like a work of art," Thompson called from the back of Engine 18, his voice dripping with pride. "Minuteman load, packed tight enough to bounce a quarter off. A-shift left us their usual triple-layer disaster, but we fixed that before coffee."
"Before coffee?" Martinez looked impressed. "That's dedication."
