The Other Side of One More Shift
- Orlando Rivera
- 6 days ago
- 3 min read
The alarm went off at 4:12 a.m.
He let it ring longer than he should have. Not because he was tired. Because the quiet felt easier than moving. The ceiling fan hummed. The house was still. For a moment, nothing demanded anything from him.
Eventually, he got up.
Coffee brewed and went mostly untouched. Keys were grabbed from the same bowl they’d lived in for years. Jacket. Wallet. Phone. Muscle memory handled the routine while his mind stayed half asleep.
It was just another workday.
The drive was uneventful. Empty roads. Familiar turns. The kind of morning where you feel like you’re ahead of the world instead of chasing it. Somewhere nearby, a siren wailed, distant and sharp.
He heard it without really hearing it.
Sirens were part of life. Background noise. Someone else’s emergency.
At work, the day filled itself with noise. Conversations that sounded important but wouldn’t matter tomorrow. Jokes traded to make the hours move faster. Complaints about things no one planned to fix.
During a break, his phone buzzed.
A reminder he’d set weeks ago.
Call her.
He frowned, trying to remember exactly when he’d written it and why it suddenly felt heavy. Someone important. Someone he kept meaning to make time for.
Not now, he thought. Later.
Lunch was eaten in his car. A sandwich he barely tasted. Sunlight warmed the dashboard. A truck honked as it pulled out of the lot. Someone waved. He waved back, automatically.
A siren screamed past, close enough to rattle the windows. For a moment, he watched it disappear down the road and wondered who it was headed toward. He hoped they’d be okay.
He always hoped that.
The afternoon dragged. Traffic reports crackled over the radio. Construction cones narrowed lanes. A dull headache settled in behind his eyes. He thought about dinner. About stopping somewhere on the way home. About how tired he felt for no clear reason.
The sky turned that soft orange that lies to you about how gentle the world is.
As he approached the intersection, the siren came again.
Louder.
Closer.
People will talk about seconds after that. About reaction time. About angles and speed and what should have happened. They’ll dissect it in comment sections and courtrooms and break rooms.
What he remembers is sound stacking on itself. Metal. Shouting. Then silence arriving too fast.
He doesn’t remember sitting down. Only that he was suddenly on the curb with his hands pressed flat to the pavement like it might anchor him to the world. Someone asked his name. He answered without hearing himself speak.
Someone told him to breathe.
He stared at the ground because looking up felt impossible.
A helmet lay nearby.
He didn’t know why that detail would follow him for the rest of his life.
Time fractured after that. Voices blurred together. Lights flashed. Movement happened somewhere else. He was told to wait. He waited. He was told to stand. He stood.
Eventually, everything went quiet in a way that felt wrong.
That’s when his phone buzzed.
Once.
Twice.
He hadn’t noticed it in his pocket. When he finally pulled it out, his hands shook so badly he almost dropped it.
The message had come through just minutes before the siren he’d heard too late.
Don’t forget your charger again.
He stared at the screen until the words blurred.
Later, he would learn where she’d been going. What she’d already done that day. Who was waiting for her. What plans never happened. What promises were left hanging in the air.
He would hear her name spoken with reverence and grief and pride.
He would never say it out loud himself.
He stopped driving for a while after that. When he did drive again, sirens felt different. Like they were aimed directly at his chest. He avoided that intersection. Avoided mirrors. Avoided sleep.
He replayed the day in fragments. The alarm. The untouched coffee. The call he didn’t make. The reminder he dismissed because there was always later.
The world didn’t stop. Shifts still got filled. Calls still came in. People still laughed in break rooms.
And that was somehow the hardest part.
Two people woke up that morning thinking it was just one more shift.
One laced boots.
One grabbed keys.
Only one of them would be remembered.
And the other would spend the rest of his life remembering too.
Because sometimes, the unexpected outcome isn’t dying.
It’s living after the sirens stop.
__________________________
Read the original post here:
__________________________
Want more unfiltered posts like this in your inbox?