After a double shift in the ER, the only place still lit was the grocery store on the edge of town.
I grabbed a single frozen dinner and headed to the last open register.
The cashier was maybe nineteen, rubbing her eyes. A karaoke songbook sat on the counter, dog-eared to "Landslide."
"We're the closing crew," she said, scanning my dinner.
I laughed. It felt true. For a moment we were two people holding the world up while everyone else slept.
I thought about the slow hour between lunch and dinner service at the hospital, when the waiting room empties and you can almost forget the pain.
But midnight always brings them back. The car crashes, the chest pains, the kids with fevers.
I paid in exact change. She handed me the receipt and said, "Drive safe."
Outside, the high plains sky was so dark and wide it felt like I was the only one under it. But I wasn't. There was a register still humming behind me.