The Smell of a Hard Shift
No man.
I was standing in a warm, well-lit office.
Floor-to-ceiling shelves of medical texts lined the walls; the air smelled faintly of sandalwood and lavender; a white-noise machine hummed in the corner.
And in the middle of the room, on the floor beside a leather sofa, was my wife — curled tight, knees to her chest, hands clamped over her ears, gasping in short mechanical bursts, her whole body shaking.
Not crying.
Something deeper and more frightening than crying.