“There was nothing you could have done,” I told her.

She sniffled, and her eyes finally seemed to focus on me. “I know, but…god. I
don’t think I’ll ever get that sight out of my head.”
Don’t worry, tomorrow you’ll see something equally traumatic, and that will take
its place, a dark part of me thought, but I would never say something like that
aloud.
“Has anyone told you about the therapists?” I asked her.
She nodded. “Third floor, right?”
“And if you’re on a night shift and need to talk to someone, there’s a 24/7call
line.”
Our hospital might overwork us, but it did an excellent job of prioritizing the
mental health of its staff. We saw the same amount of daily trauma soldiers might
face on a front line, and the burnout and PTSD rates were sky-high because of it.
I regularly spoke to one of the on-call therapists. It was one of the few things
keeping me relatively sane while the healthcare system crumbled around us, and so
many people quit the field that we were becoming dangerously understaffed.
“I don’t have the number for the call line,” Brinley said, a single tear rolling
down her cheek.
This was good. Tears I could work with. Tears meant she was already processing,
and the risk of her going into shock was passing.
“Which locker did you put your stuff in?” I asked. “I’ll grab your phone and add
the number.
”Twenty minutes later, she was back on her feet with her hands wrapped around a
steaming mug of chamomile tea. I’d put the call line in her phone, she’d stopped
trembling, and a little color was returning to her cheeks. Only one other nurse was
in the room with us now, having replaced the previous, unhelpful two from before.
That nurse was Tanya, a trim black woman in her mid-40s who’d worked in trauma
hospitals almost as long as Brinley had been alive. Tanya was my favorite coworker.
She was great under pressure, had an excellent bedside manner, and knew more about
treating people in emergency situations than most doctors we worked with.
Right now, she was standing with Brinley near the window, talking quietly, one
hand gripping the younger woman’s shoulder. I tuned in and out as I gathered mine
and Brinley’s stuff, trusting Tanya to know all the right words to use as she
coaxed Brinley back from the brink.
“You did so well,” I heard her say. “And I’m not just blowing smoke up your ass to
make you feel better. I’ve seen other nurses with more experience freeze up during
nights like this, but you kept your shit together and did what you had to.” She
turned to me. “Back me up, Aly.”
I slung Brinley’s bag over my shoulder and joined them. “She’s not lying,” I said.
“You crushed it, from what I saw. And it’s totally normal to break down a little
afterward. All that adrenaline built up too high, and your cortisol levels probably
went bananas. There’s no shame in disappearing into a miniature stress coma. I
still do it, too, on really bad nights.”
Brinley paled. “I thought tonight was really bad.”
Whoops. Time to backtrack.
“It was,” I said. “I just meant I didn’t see the worst this time. I think you and
Mallory did.”
She let out a shaky breath. “Oh. Okay.”
Tanya turned back to her. “Now, Aly’s gonna give you a ride home. Her shift is
over, too.”
Brinley looked between us. “But my car is here.”
Tanya nodded. “Yes, but we don’t think you should drive right now.”
Brinley seemed to see the wisdom in that. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I checked your schedule. We’re both on shift at the same
time tomorrow, so I’ll give you a lift back. You parked in the employee lot?”
She nodded.
“Your car should be fine there. Do you need to get anything out of it?” She
frowned. “I don’t think so?”
 Tanya plucked the tea from her hands. “Then you two should get out of here while
you can.”
“Thank you,” I mouthed at her.
She nodded.
It wasn’t uncommon to get roped into a few more hours of work if you loitered too
long after your shift ended because someone always needed an extra set of hands or
more people were required to help stabilize a patient. Brinley wasn’t in any shape
for that, and I’d been here four extra hours already. It was time to go.
I steered Brinley toward the exit, and we took the back way out to avoid running
into anyone else. She was quiet as we walked but looked much better than when I
first saw her, so I took that as a good sign.
“Do you live with anyone?” I asked her.
“My boyfriend,” she said.
“Is he home right now?” I didn’t love the idea of leaving her alone if he wasn’t.
She nodded. “He is. I texted him at the end of my shift before I sat down, and,
well. You saw.”
“Talking about it helps,” I told her. “I’m not sure if your boyfriend is
squeamish, but telling him about what you went through tonight could get some of it
out of your head.”
“I’m not sure,” she said, her voice laced with indecision.
“You don’t have to go into detail. Just the basics. And I put my number in your
phone along with the therapist line, so you can always call me too.”
She shot me a relieved look. “Thank you. I don’t think he’d get it. You know?”
I nodded. I did know. Unlike Brinley, I was single…ish, but even when I had
partners, I didn’t talk shop with them. I never dated seriously – I was too career-
focused for that right now – and talking about a bad day or how sad it was when I
lost a patient felt like the kind of thing you saved for a significant other.
Mostly, I spilled my guts to therapists or other nurses, and from the look on
Brinley’s face, I could tell she would be the same. Civilians, as we called non-
healthcare or emergency workers, didn’t get it a lot of the time.
We chatted more on the way home about safer topics like the latest TV show
everyone was watching to distract ourselves from the night we’d had. By the time I
dropped Brinley off at her townhouse, the sun was starting to rise over the city,
glinting off the distant high-rises and painting the clouds a macabre ombre that
ranged from the deep purple of new bruises to the arterial red of freshly spilled
blood.
God, I’m morbid this morning, I thought, pulling my eyes from the sky.
I’d spent so much time trying to help and then distract Brinley that I hadn’t
processed my own shitshow of a night. There was a guy who’d gotten stabbed three
times, a woman with a broken wrist, bloody nose, and a guilty-looking husband who
wouldn’t let her speak for herself, and a two-year-old with RSV so bad he had to be
med-flighted to the children’s hospital.
The worst was the homeless man with frostbite. Not because it was an extreme case
– his frostbite was relatively mild, and he’d keep all his toes – but because no
one else in my rotation wanted to go in his room because he smelled so bad,
complaining loudly enough in the hall outside that he probably heard them. It both
broke my heart and pissed me off, so I sent the others running and took care of him
myself.
Those were the kind of cases that stuck with me now, not the overly gory ones, but
the sad ones. I fixated on them. Where was that man’s family? Were they looking for
him? What about the woman being abused by her husband? Would she be able to get out
before he hurt her again?
My drive home passed in a blur as these thoughts filled my head, and before I knew
it, I was pulling into my driveway. The street was dark enough that my house was
lit up by twinkling string lights. It was well into the second week of January, but
a few of my neighbors still had their holiday decorations up, so I wasn’t rushing
to take mine down. Seeing those lights flashing merrily in the pre-dawn gloom was
precisely the kind of pick-me-up I needed – anything to keep the darkness at bay.
I turned my car off and got out. My house wasn’t much, just a small two-bedroom
craftsman-style cottage in a semi-safe neighborhood, but it was all mine, and I was
damn proud of the work I’d done fixing it up and putting my unique stamp on the
place. The siding was an antique pale blue-green, the trim was a warm white, and
the small front deck looked festive and inviting thanks to the holiday-themed
welcome sign and the Christmas tree that sparkled with tinsel and decorations.
Inside, it was just as merry. I didn’t have any family left that mattered, and
decking my house out top to bottom in seasonal décor was how I distracted myself
from the depressing fact that I either spent the holidays alone or working every
year.
A loud yowl split the air as I closed the door behind me and kicked off my shoes.
Well, I wasn’t entirely alone. I did have Fred to keep me company. He must have
been fast asleep on my bed when I walked in because his yowling started farther
away and then rose in pitch and volume as he raced toward me, like an ambulance
screaming down a highway.
Man, he’s loud when he’s angry, I thought. If he kept this up, my nearest
neighbors were going to start thinking I hurt him.
“Oh my god, Fred,” I said as my long-haired black and white cat raced around the
corner. “You’re fine. I’m only a few hours late this time.”
I scooped him up when he reached me, turning him onto his back so I could bury my
face in his fluffy belly. My mom called this “fur therapy” growing up. She’d come
home from a long day of work, and before saying hi to Dad or me, she’d head
straight to a cat and snuggle them until they started to squirm. It always made her
feel better, so I’d done the same thing to Fred since the day after he showed up in
my yard, a half-drowned kitten crying to get out of a storm. I didn’t know if it
was because he was so young when I started doing it to him, but he tolerated fur
therapy pretty well, purring and making biscuits in my hair.
I probably would have seemed like a lunatic to non-cat people, but I didn’t give a
shit. On principle, I didn’t trust anyone who didn’t like cats, so they’d never be
around to judge me anyway.
I set Fred down once I’d gotten my fill, and he trotted behind me as I headed into
my room to change. You think I’d be tired after such a long shift, but I was wide
awake. Probably because I’d learned how to fall asleep at the drop of a dime, and I
found somewhere to take a five-minute powernap whenever there was a lull. The
hospital had been weirdly quiet from midnight to one, and I’d slept for a whole
hour. Tanya told me one of the floor nurses – someone who worked on a higher floor
in a specialty unit – had commented about it being slow when she came to pick up
lab work, which jinxed us. ER nurses knew better than to say things like that.
I showered, changed into the coziest pajamas I owned, poured myself an oversized
glass of white wine, and snuggled up with Fred on my couch. I had half a mind to
turn on the TV and zone out for a while, but I hadn’t checked my phone once during
my shift, and those social media notifications were calling.
Giving in to the inevitable, I pulled up my favorite app and started scrolling.
There were the expected videos of cute animals doing cute things, people acting
like idiots and getting themselves into trouble, storytimes about exes, and
muscular people posing in gym mirrors. But more than anything else, there were
thirst traps. Specifically, thirst traps of men wearing some sort of mask. My
obsession with them started at the beginning of autumn when this subgenre of videos
rose to the spotlight every year, thanks to horny book lovers and lusty lurkers
like me.
With one hand, I scratched behind Fred’s ears. The other was busy smashing that
like button for videos of men dressed in cosplay, decked out in futuristic military
gear, and even a few sporting full horror movie costumes. I saved my favorites for
the ghost-like masks, though. The shirtless ones had me drooling. Add in a knife
and some fake blood, and that was an instant follow
My absolute favorite creator was a user with the handle “the.faceless.man” because
he had everything I loved most: a custom mask that was unlike anyone else’s and was
as sensual as it was terrifying, muscles, good lighting, exceptional music
selection, and an innate understanding of how to reel the viewer in and keep us
begging for more. I had a whole favorite section devoted to his videos, and I
routinely went back and rewatched them whenever I needed a distraction after a bad
shift.
Like tonight.
I drained the last of my wine – damn, I completely lost track of time when I
scrolled – and got up to pour myself another round. Fred jumped down from the couch
and curled inside his little felt house by the TV, having reached his snuggle
limit. I checked his food and water in the kitchen – both were still mostly full –
and emptied the last of the wine into my glass. By the time I finished it, I’d be
half a bottle deep.
Yup, I’d be tipsy soon and hopefully tired. I only had ten hours until my next
shift started, and I desperately needed to catch up on all the sleep I’d missed
during the usual holiday uptick at the hospital.
I tugged a blanket over myself as I sat back down, then pulled up my videos of the
Faceless Man, as I’d taken to calling him. It was hard to pick a favorite, but if
someone held a gun to my head and told me I had to, it would be the one where he
was sprawled out over a couch, shirtless, his head resting on the arm, the scene
flooded by red light. He was only visible from the ribs up, his skin covered in
tattoos, muscles clenched as his arm moved in a rhythmic motion that suggested he
was jerking off but didn’t go far enough to get him banned.
I never knew where to look when I watched it. At the way his biceps tensed and
flexed with every stroke? Or how his chest heaved like he was on the brink of
coming? Or just off-screen, where I could imagine his hand pumping his straining
cock?
He started the video staring up at the ceiling. Toward the very end, he turned his
head to stare directly into the camera, and even though I knew a mask couldn’t have
an expression, it felt like his did. Like those gaping black eyes stared straight
into my soul, and that smirking mouth was calling my name while he came. The video
cut off right after he turned his head, and it was embarrassing how many times I’d
paused it right before that happened so I could stare into those eyes a few moments
longer.
What would it be like to be in the room with him when he filmed it? To be the one
he thought of while he got himself off? Or better yet, to come home one day and
find him taking up this very couch as he waited for me in the dark, covered in
blood, light glinting off the steel of his knife?
That thought made me shudder with a mix of desire and fear. I wanted it in a way
that probably wasn’t healthy, but after all the ugly shit I’d seen working in the
trauma center, and even before that in my fucked-up teen years, it was only natural
that my tastes were starting to skew heavily toward the dark side.
Maybe Tyler will wear it for me, I thought.
Right, Tyler. The guy I’d been hooking up with for almost a year now.
I’d nearly forgotten about him. It wasn’t that he was forgettable exactly – he was
good-looking and a decent lay – but when work got busy, I tended to lose myself in
it, and that had been happening a lot because of the hospital’s staffing crisis.
When was the last time we hooked up? It must have been before Christmas, at
least. Meaning it was far past time for a booty call. Tomorrow was my last shift of
the week, and then I had two glorious days off. What better way to spend them than
spread out under a man who knew where a clit was?
I drained my wine, feeling high on the possibility of experiencing a masked man in
real life. Before I could think better of it, I screenshotted an image of my
favorite video and sent it to Tyler along with a text.
I have two days off starting Friday. Wanna come over that night and bring a mask
like this? I promise I’ll make it interesting for you.
His response didn’t come back until a few hours into my shift the next day because
he’d been asleep like a normal person when I sent my text.
My heart sank as I read his words
Damn, girl. You still alive? I thought you ghosted me. It’s been two months. Pass
on the mask thing. I’m not into it, and I’m seeing someone anyway.
Two months? Had it really been that long? I scrolled up in our text thread, and,
shit, it had. Maybe it was time to book another therapy session and ask if they had
any tips for balancing a personal life alongside this line of work.
Because clearly, I was failing.