The exact moment the coffee gave up on me

It was 3:17 a.m., and I’d just finished a 28-hour shift. The hospital coffee — that sad, lukewarm sludge they call ‘espresso’ — finally did what I’d been hoping for all night: it stopped pretending to be coffee. I took a sip, and it tasted like regret and industrial cleaning fluid. I stared at the cup for three full seconds, then poured it down the sink with the kind of reverence usually reserved for old letters. My dog, who’d been watching from under the desk, looked at me like, 'You’re not even trying anymore.' And honestly? I wasn’t. But the quiet in the kitchen after that… that felt like a