During the night, Noor walked through the psych ward. The only sound was her footsteps hitting the ground and her quiet breathing. It was her first night shift on the job. It was her first time on the job.

She requested to get nights off because her FND makes it hard for her to stay up and not be fatigued or dizzy. They gave it anyway. Maybe they forgot. Maybe they wanted to see how she would d...

I start my job, night to dawn,

Wearing a name tag that shows my name is John.

Patients are coming and going, in and out.

But, some don’t go out.

I look in my bag with tools, and I see a note,

Unsure of what it wrote.

It reads, “I’m coming, Lory, don’t worry. You won’t be alone anymore, when I come let me through the door. I’ll see you soon and I love you.”

I was not certain of why this was here,...

There are some days, she wishes she never found the note. She wishes she had walked by it, thought of a piece of trash, and threw it away. She keeps it with her, always tucked in her breast pocket, close to her heart. It’s pages have been folded over and over, the crease is beginning to break, the ink beginning to fade on the edges where her fingers have left their marked.

She can feel its words...

As Angela walked through the long bustling corridors of the hospital, she saw all of the patients that needed help and she felt empathy for them. She was taking care of her own patient though, and this boy was important. She had to take care of him and be with him for he was going to die soon.

She walked further in the hallway and it became less busy. ROOM 456. Angela opened the door and went in...

I probably shouldn’t be reading this—

Was my first thought when I found the paper stuffed inbetween the vintage New Testament I had found under the tiles in the Westmont’s Hospital cleaning closet. It was an odd find—I was returning a mop accidentally left out by the janitor and had seen the tile sticking up. Before I knew it I was sitting in the palely lit closet on my knees carefully unfolding ...

Bedtime was 10 pm. It had always been 10 pm. Like manu, i am a creature of habit, at 9 pm I would slip into my pajamas, let my dog Shadow out, make a p b and j sandwich and lay in bed listening to podcasts until i drifted off. Until last night when something strange happened. I had gotten a new job, working 7 a m till 4 p m driving forklift at the warehouse a couple blocks over. My body was adjust...

I needed a job bad, i needed smackers. I fired up microsoft word and opened my resume. I changed my name to Elon Musk and edited my job experience to say i had been a nurse for 600 years and that i single handedly cured the bubonic plague. I said my hobbies included saving the world and inventing new medicines and occasionally fist fighting germs. A local nursing home was thrilled to have Elon Mus...

“Please, just kill me.”

The wooden desk was always empty near his bedside. He never put water or food on that side of her bed. Sun would shine in from the nearby window and illuminate dust, sun panes, and shadows, but there was never any object. A plant would probably do well there, Nurse Bianchi had thought more than once. That was why she knew that the letter wasn’t there before, and was there...

It’s almost three in the morning. Only one hour until I can clock out.

In the break room, I leafed through all of my patient’s files. As I did so, I could barely keep my eyes open. Fatigue drained all the energy from my body. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t have enough money to buy an energy bar from the vending machines. I must push through the remaining minutes of my shift as I read through the ...

Everything changed that day. I’d say it was the start of both our lives, but Liliana’s life . . . She never really had a start. Just the horrible truth that the end could be any day.

Like every perfect story, the day started out . . . Terrible.

“Adrain!” Mom’s quiet knock makes my heart stop. I thought she was still at work. If I’d known she was going to be here then I wouldn’t have slammed the...