Some nights in the hospital don't feel like time is passing. They feel like time has curled up in a supply closet and fallen asleep, leaving the rest of us to wander through the leftover silence.
I clocked out late again.
I wasn't working overtime. I just didn't feel like leaving. The air outside had turned cold fast, that kind of pre-winter bite that gets into your bones and your breath. Inside felt warmer—not just by temperature, but by familiarity. Even the broken floor sign leaning against the hallway wall looked like it belonged more than I did outside.
I passed Camila's room again.
She was awake, barely. Eyes half-lidded, pencil in hand, sketching something with the focus of a surgeon. She didn't see me. I didn't knock. Just kept walking, trying not to attach meaning to it.
I ended up on the roof.
Technically off-limits. Spiritually necessary.
---
I wasn't alone.
Jude was already there, jacket open, sitting on a plastic chair like it owed him rent. He was watching the skyline—one hand on his coffee, the other holding a half-smoked cigarette he wasn't actually lighting.
"Thought you quit," I said.
"Still quitting," he replied. "Takes time."
I sat beside him. The sky was a mess of light pollution and stars fighting to be noticed.
"You ever wonder what the hell we're doing here?" I asked.
He looked at me. "You mean here as in… Earth?"
"No. Here as in this job. This building. These people."
Jude nodded. "Every day."
There was a long pause.
Then he added, "But the second I stop wondering, I'll know it's time to leave."
---
We talked about nothing for a while. That kind of easy nothing that friends can sit in without needing to fill.
Eventually, Jude stood, stretched, and said, "C'mon. We're going to check the window."
"The what?"
"The Night Window," he said. "It's a thing. Everett showed it to me once."
---
We took the stairs down to the third floor and through a half-lit hallway I'd never paid attention to before. One of the side corridors was under renovation—plastic curtains, taped-off tiles, and flickering lights that felt like we were walking through an abandoned spaceship.
And there it was.
A square, dusty window facing the rear lot. The angle was awkward. You had to crouch just right to see it. But when you did—
You could see your own reflection.
Not directly. Not like a mirror. The glass caught the overlay of your face against the streetlights behind you, the glow bouncing just enough to cast you onto yourself.
"Why is this important?" I asked.
Jude shrugged. "Sometimes you have to look at yourself in a place nobody else can."
I crouched beside him. Stared.
I looked tired.
But I also looked like I was still there.
Still showing up.
---
Later that week, everything sped up again.
Admissions flooded. Camila spiked a fever. Trevor sliced his palm on a broken thermometer. Kip spilled a full jug of enzymatic cleaner into an elevator shaft. And Everett disappeared for six hours without explanation.
I found him eventually, sitting behind the hospice storage room, holding a pillow wrapped in old linen.
"What is that?" I asked.
He looked down. "Something I couldn't throw away."
Turns out, it was a child's pillow from a patient who passed two winters ago. No family. No ceremony. Just a name that had faded off the chart.
"I know it's irrational," he said. "But it felt like I'd be erasing them."
I didn't tell him he was wrong.
Some things deserve to be carried.
---
On Friday, I was walking past the front desk when a woman in her seventies stopped me. Pale coat, purse like a brick, the kind of elegance that didn't ask to be noticed.
"Excuse me," she said. "Do you work here?"
"Yes ma'am."
She smiled. "Then tell me—do you know the name of the janitor who left a paper crane on my husband's nightstand two years ago?"
I blinked.
"Sorry?"
"My husband died here, room 417," she said gently. "He was very quiet. He didn't speak much in the end. But one morning, there was a paper crane by his water cup. He smiled when he saw it. First time in days."
I didn't have an answer. But I didn't need one.
"I'll find out," I told her.
She nodded. "If you do… thank them for me."
---
Later that night, I left a paper crane on her husband's old room's windowsill.
Didn't tell anyone.
Didn't need to.
Because some things you do not for credit—but because they're part of you now.
---
As I got ready to leave, I passed Everett near the exit.
He looked at me, then down at my hand. I was holding the journal again—the one from inventory.
"You still writing?" he asked.
"Yeah," I said. "I think I need to."
Everett nodded. "Good. Because one day, someone's going to find that. And they'll need to remember that people like you were here."
---
Hospitals don't stand because of their walls.
They stand because of the people who leave pieces of themselves behind.
A drawing.
A mop swipe.
A folded paper crane.
A night window.
And the quiet belief that even in the smallest acts… something eternal is watching.