The Call You Keep Remembering Never Happened

There’s this call that won’t leave you.

You can feel it in your shoulders.

Hear it in the shower.

Smell it when the weather turns just a little cold.

You remember the time of day.

The patient’s name.

The way your gloves stuck when you tried to open the IV kit.

You remember the voice that screamed from the hallway.

The sound of Velcro ripping as you cut through denim.

The monitor flatlining after a last-ditch epi push.

You remember the daughter clinging to your vest.

Begging you to lie.

Begging you to stay.

You remember the drive back to quarters in silence.

The chart you couldn’t finish.

The sandwich you threw away.

But here’s what you don’t know:

That call never happened.

Not like that.

The date you keep writing in your sleep?

You were off.

The name you keep whispering in your dreams? Wrong county.The medic you keep blaming for messing up compressions? She wasn’t on your shift that month.

You made it all up.

Your brain did.

Because it needed something to explain what you actually can’t process:

All the real calls you stuffed away.

All the trauma you minimized.

All the guilt you swallowed with a coffee and a sarcastic laugh.

You invented a call because the truth was messier.

Because grief with a name is easier to carry than burnout without a cause.

Because if you could just find one call to blame…

maybe you could finally rest.

But the twist is this:

It wasn’t one call.

It was all of them.

Every ignored cry for help.

Every quiet ride home where you convinced yourself this is just how it is.

Every day you played the role of “fine” for people who never saw you breaking.

So here’s your unofficial field diagnosis:

You’re not weak.

You’re full.

Your trauma cup is spilling over and your brain gave it a story so you’d finally pay attention.

Not to what happened.

But to what’s happening to you.

Right now.

You’re still in this.

You’re still showing up.

You’re still fighting the fires no one else sees.

But you don’t have to do it alone anymore.

__________________________

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