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Years of studying until the wee hours in the morning and then years of five a.m. rounds does something to a body that never really goes away.

Even here, my eyes pop open at six without an alarm, and I lie there for a while just staring at the ceiling, thinking about work.

I miss my job. It makes sense, right? I spent more than half my life studying and working for this moment and now it’s been taken away from me.

In my haste to get out of my house in time, I never bothered to notify the hospital that I was going to take a leave of absence.

Tears prick the corners of my eyes and I screw my eyes shut, not wanting to cry again.

But it’s hard not to.

I miss the smell of the hospital.

I miss my pager going crazy, the sounds of the OR.

I miss Dawn heckling me over donuts at the nurses’ station and Priya’s random hilarious memes.

I wonder, not for the first time, whether they’ve filled my spot yet.

Did they think I quit?

Did anyone do a wellness check?

If I ever make it back, will there even be a place for me?

Or will I get quietly replaced and forgotten?

The way empty chairs at a hospital always get filled by somebody else eventually.

No, don’t think like that, I tell myself firmly. It doesn’t help anything at six in the morning.

I lie there until six-thirty, then I get up, shower, and pull on leggings and a sports bra, planning to go for a run before the house wakes up.

I’ve learned this estate’s rhythms by now. Nobody’s up before eight.

The halls are always empty, the light always gray and quiet, and I can move through the place like it’s mine for an hour.

I head downstairs still half asleep, moving slow and sluggish the way I always do before my body catches up with the idea of being awake.

I carry my running shoes with me, the marble cool under my socked feet. The house is quiet. Almost too quiet.

Then I hear it.

A shriek. High, sharp, and delighted.

I freeze on the bottom stair. What the hell was that?

For a second my sleep-fogged brain runs through possibilities that don’t make sense—a bird, a pipe, a television left on somewhere—then it comes again, and this time there’s no mistaking it.

My head whips toward the direction of the noise and I don’t even breathe, as if that’ll prevent me from hearing that noise again.

It’s…it’s a child. A child’s laugh is coming from somewhere toward the back of the house.

My stomach drops straight through the floor.

A child.

I start toward the sound at a jog, but then I start to pick up the pace.