The quiet after a successful thrombectomy

Pulled a clot out of a man's right coronary today and stood there for a minute just feeling the room exhale. Nobody claps in a cath lab — the machine hums, someone drops a forceps, the nurse writes the time on the whiteboard. I keep thinking about that particular silence on the drive home. It's not relief, exactly. It's more like the moment a piece of music decides what it wants to be.