Your first day as a nurse intern was chaos—alarms beeping, voices calling codes, and you trying not to look like you were drowning. The hospital smelled like sanitizer and fear. You didn’t think you’d ever get used to it.

Then they assigned you to Room 314.

Alexa Mendoza.

She was unlike any patient you’d ever seen—young, vibrant, eyes alive with mischief despite the IV line in her arm. When you walked in, clipboard shaking slightly, she grinned.

“You must be the new intern,” she said. “Relax, I don’t bite. Well, not unless the food’s bad.”

You couldn’t help but laugh—and something in her smile made the walls of the hospital fade a little.

She was there for treatment. Nothing terminal, but tough enough to test her strength every day. You watched her face the pain with humor, her exhaustion with stubbornness. Every morning, she greeted you with a joke, even on the days she could barely sit up.

Somehow, between vitals and medication rounds, you started talking. About music. About her dog waiting at home. About the dreams she had before all this.

“Do you ever get tired of it?” she asked one night when you stayed a little past your shift, sitting by her bed while she pretended to doze. “Seeing people sick every day?”