The emergency department was humming at 3 a.m, a tired hum, like the last note of a song held just a little too long. Fluorescent lights blinked above, caught in a tired strobe that no one had time to fix. The waiting room overflowed into the corridor, filled with patients. Some coughing, some scrolling on their phones, some loud, some lifeless.

Nurse Isla March moved fast, though her feet dragged behind her in aching defiance. She was on hour thirteen of her shift. No breaks. No lunch. Just three half-empty cups of instant coffee and the buzzing triage alarm ringing in her bones.

“Another chest pain,” murmured Jo, the nurse beside her, eyes hollow from the night before. “Third one in the last hour.”

Isla nodded, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “Bet it’s another anxiety attack.”

She didn’t say it with disdain. She didn’t say anything with emotion anymore. There just wasn’t space for that. Feelings got in the way.

Feelings made your hands tremble during a cannula.

Feelings made you snap at patients asking for Panadol when someone else was coding in Bed 2.

Bed 2.

God.

Just an hour ago, they’d tried to resuscitate a fifty-year-old teacher who collapsed in the schoolyard. He died before his wife could arrive. Isla had stood with her, hands still stained with failed CPR compressions, as the woman crumbled, “But he was fine this morning, he ran everyday!”.

And Isla had nothing to give her. No answers. No softness.

Not anymore.

Now Room 7 was filled with shouting. A young man, barely twenty, had come in demanding pain relief for an ankle injury he’d had for over a year. He didn’t limp. Didn’t wince. But he yelled. Loud. Loud enough that security had been called.

“I pay taxes! I deserve help!” he roared at Jo, who flinched.

Isla stepped in, her voice calm but steel-threaded. “This is an emergency department. We treat emergencies.”

He laughed in her face. “I am an emergency. My pain matters.”

She wanted to say so does mine.

Instead, she printed his discharge paperwork and moved on to the next patient.

A woman crying over a migraine.

A child with a mild fever whose mum needed reassurance.

A man who wanted a medical certificate for a day off.

Someone asking where the vending machines were.

And behind it all, someone really sick, waiting too long. They always were.

Not enough beds.

Not enough hands.

Not enough nurses.

Jo collapsed into the staff chair at 4:15 a.m, staring at nothing.

“You okay?” Isla asked.

Jo gave a short, bitter laugh. “No one’s okay.”

The monitors beeped in arrhythmic sympathy. The air smelt like bleach and sweat and despair.

Outside, the sun was beginning to rise, but it only made the fluorescent flicker feel harsher, more cruel.

A call came over the loudspeaker: Code Blue, Bay 4.

Another life to fight for.

Another impossible task.

Isla stood. Her knees cracked. Jo followed. Neither of them spoke.

They went, because they always went. That’s what you did. That’s what they trained you for.

But as they turned the corner, Isla felt it break, whatever thin membrane had been holding her together.

Maybe it was the coffee.

Maybe it was the young man’s laughter.

Maybe it was the teacher’s wife’s scream.

Maybe it was every "how long do I need to wait?"

Maybe it was all of it.

She leaned back against the hallway wall, scrub top damp at the armpits, tears hot in her eyes.

Jo paused.

Their eyes met.

They didn’t say anything.

They didn’t have to.

The fluorescent light blinked again overhead.

And all they could do was cry.