The exact moment the coffee gave up on me

It was 3:17 a.m., third shift, and I’d just finished a code blue. The hospital coffee machine made a sound like a dying cat, then spat out a sludge that looked like it had been left in a puddle for three days. I took a sip anyway—because what else is there?—and immediately remembered why I stopped drinking it years ago. Not because it’s bad, exactly. But because it’s so aggressively indifferent to being good. Like the building itself: functional, reliable, quietly exhausted. Still, I finished it. Not out of pride. Out of stubbornness. Or maybe just because I didn’t want to admit defeat to a ma