Why We Keep Showing Up (Even When It Hurts)
- Orlando Rivera
- Oct 31, 2025
- 2 min read
It’s not because we’re heroes.
Don’t call us brave. Not when we wake up three hours after night shift and can’t remember what we dreamed. Not when we sit in our cars after work wondering if we did enough. Not when the thought of going back tomorrow makes us want to disappear.
This isn’t courage.
This is compulsion. Obligation. Identity.
You don’t just clock out of who you are.
There’s no applause when it’s your 19th code this month.
No camera crews. No hashtags. No free pizza in the breakroom.
Just a stack of discharge papers that don’t match the look on the family’s face. Just a pile of used gloves and crushed Red Bulls. Just the slow, brutal crawl from one shift to the next, hoping for a moment that feels like it mattered.
And still… we show up.
Why?
Because we know the system is broken but the patients inside it still need someone. Because when your partner looks at you and says “I don’t want to go in there alone,” you don’t let them.
Because that elderly man on the floor or that girl in the psych room or that unconscious overdose in the parking lot, they don’t care how tired you are. They just need someone to come.
So we come.
Even when we’re angry. Even when we’re numb. Even when we’re hollow.
Somewhere along the way, we were taught:
Cry later.
Rest later.
Be human later.
Right now, be what they need.
And maybe that’s the part that hurts the most, that we learned to abandon ourselves in the name of care.
But here’s the quiet truth we don’t say out loud:
We don’t just show up for them. We show up for each other.
For the medic next to us who hasn’t had a day off in weeks. For the nurse who’s drowning in patients and still tries to smile. For the charge who texts “I got you” even when the department’s falling apart.
We stay for the ones who are still standing because we know what it’s like to fall.
That’s the kind of loyalty you don’t find in job descriptions.
You find it in the unspoken moments:
A gloved hand reaching out during CPR.
A trauma room cleaned in silence.
A look across the hallway that says I know.
That’s why we keep showing up.
Not because we’re okay.
But because we refuse to let each other fall alone.
If you're still showing up... I see you.
If you’re tired but haven’t quit, If you’re numb but still care, If you’ve lost count of how many times you said “I’m fine” when you weren’t…
You’re not alone.
You’re part of something unbreakable, even if you feel broken.
End With This
Leave the cape. Bring the gloves. We don’t need heroes. We just need each other.
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