Night Shift on the Seventh Floor

Sarah Chen worked the overnight shift in the ICU at Memorial Hospital in Houston during the spring of 2020. Every evening she suited up in layers of PPE, knowing she was walking into rooms where ventilators hissed and families couldn't visit. She was terrified.

One night, hands trembling before her shift, she opened her phone to Psalm 34 and read David's words: "I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears." She whispered it like a lifeline. Then she walked through the double doors.

Something shifted. Not her circumstances — the virus didn't care about prayers. But Sarah did. Night after night, she prayed that psalm before clocking in. Her coworkers noticed. In a unit defined by exhaustion and dread, Sarah carried something they couldn't name. Her charge nurse, Marcus, finally asked. "You're different. What is it?"

"I'm scared every single night," Sarah told him. "But I stopped carrying the fear alone."