To the Ones Who Always Wait for Us: A Letter from the Other Side of the Shift

Another emergency waits for us at the end of the shift.

We are not done. We are never done.
There’s always another beeping monitor. Another body fighting. Another silence before the storm.

We leave pieces of ourselves in every room we enter.
Somewhere between the code blues and the whispered prayers, something inside us frays.

There are days when even our own faces feel like strangers.
Days when we forget our own birthdays.
When the sunrise through the hospital window looks more like an apology than a promise.

And yet—

You wait for us.

You wait while we wash death from our hands.
You wait while we stitch up strangers.
You wait while we swallow the things we cannot say.

You don’t see the way we press a fist into our chest sometimes, trying to hold in the grief.

You don’t hear the names we carry home in silence.

You don’t know how often we ask ourselves if we gave enough. If we fought hard enough. If we mattered at all.

Still, you wait.

And that matters more than anything you could ever say.

Please —
wait for us.

We are fighting battles you cannot see,
wearing armor that feels heavier every night.
We are coming home slower, softer, tired down to the bone.

But we are coming.

Hold the light a little longer.
We will find our way back to it.

Wait for us.

To Our Parents

Some days, we can’t even reach our phones.
Some days, we forget what day it is.
We are distracted. Worn down. Silent.

It’s not because we don’t think of you.
It’s not because we don’t care.

It’s because somewhere, behind another closed door, another life is slipping through our hands —
and we are trying to hold it together with nothing but willpower and gloves that tear too easily.

You don’t see the things we carry.
You don’t hear the goodbyes we never get to say.
But they cling to us, even when we walk into your kitchen and pretend we are whole.

Please —
wait for us.

Even when we don’t call.
Even when the light in our eyes looks like it’s gone somewhere too far to reach.
Even when we seem like a stranger standing in our own shoes.

I am still coming home.

To Our Children

Some nights, I am only half-human when I come home.
I move slower. I speak less.
I smell like bleach and lost battles.

You don’t understand why I sit so quietly sometimes.
Why I stare at nothing.
Why my hugs feel delayed, like I’m catching up to the moment.

It’s not because I don’t love you.
It’s because some days, I have nothing left to give —
and I am terrified you will see how broken I am inside.

You deserve more than fragments.
You deserve more than a tired shell wearing a badge.

Please —
wait for me.

Wait for the part of me that is still fighting to crawl back across the hospital parking lot to find you.
Wait for the part that still dreams about your laughter, even under fluorescent lights and dying batteries.

I am coming.
I promise.

Even if some days, it feels like I’m walking through a storm just to reach you.

To Our Lovers

We are not easy to love.

Some nights, we come home in pieces.
We forget your stories halfway through dinner.
We fall asleep in the middle of your sentences.
We pull away without meaning to —
lost somewhere between a patient’s last breath and tomorrow’s shift.

It’s not you.
It’s the weight we carry when nobody is looking.
The thousand invisible losses stitched into our skin.

You deserve warmth, laughter, soft hands.
Instead, you get heavy silences.
Half-smiles.
Eyes that still see things you’ll never know.

Please —
wait for us.

Wait through the distance we don’t know how to close.
Wait through the nights we come home ghosts.
Wait through the mornings we are too tired to say what we mean.

We are still here.
Buried under the beeping monitors, under the exhaustion, under the fear.
We are still fighting to find our way back to you.

To Our Friends

We know we vanished.
We know the calls stopped.
The birthdays missed.
The messages left hanging in space.

It’s not because we stopped caring.
It’s because life demanded more from us than we had left to give.

Some days, we are too full of other people’s pain to speak.
Some days, the thought of telling one more story — even to you — feels too heavy to carry.

But we remember you.
We miss you in the spaces between alarms.
We think of you when the world outside these walls feels like a memory.

Please —
wait for us.

Wait through the silence.
Wait through the fading texts.
Wait through the years that feel like hours to us but eternities to you.

We are not lost.
We are just somewhere you can’t see right now.

And we are still fighting to come back.

To The Ones We Lost

We didn’t mean to lose you.
We didn’t mean to leave.

But somewhere between duty and exhaustion,
somewhere between broken promises and missed calls,
we lost parts of our own lives.

Past loves.
Past friends.
The ones who once stood at the door waiting —
until they stopped.

Please forgive us.

We never stopped caring.
The weight was too much.
The distance was too far.
And the road back was a map we didn’t know how to read anymore.

If you still think of us,
know this:

We carry you.
In the quiet moments.
In the long walks to our cars.
In the way our hearts still hesitate when the world is too silent.

You mattered.
You still do.

Please forgive us.
Please forgive who we had to become to survive.