I fold sheets until my wrists ache and the corners blur together. There is a rhythm to it that you do not notice at first, but once you do, it never really leaves you. Lift, snap, fold, stack. Over and over. The fabric has its own weight, heavier when it is damp, lighter when it has been sitting too long and cooled down. Some days my hands know what to do before my brain catches up.
The cart squeaks no matter how much oil maintenance adds. They come by every so often, nod, write something on a clipboard, and the cart still squeaks the next morning. It announces me before I arrive. I hear it echo down the hall and know that everyone else hears it too. It is a small thing, but after a while it starts to feel like the sound of my job itself. Always there. Always a little irritating. Never urgent enough to fix properly.
People think of hospitals as bright and busy places. Beeping machines. Doctors moving fast. Nurses everywhere. They do not think about the linen room. They do not picture a woman standing under fluorescent lights, folding the same size sheet for the hundredth time before noon. They do not picture how hot it gets when the dryers run too long, or how the air smells faintly of soap and something metallic I cannot quite name.
Nurses notice when something is missing, not when it is right. They notice if the cart is short a blanket. They notice if a pillowcase is the wrong size. They do not notice the stacks that are perfect, the ones I refolded because the corner was off by an inch. When things go smoothly, it disappears into the background. When they do not, suddenly I exist again, usually as a problem.
I tell myself the work matters. I have to. Someone has to sleep on those sheets. Someone bleeds on them. Someone wraps themselves in them at the worst moment of their life. Clean matters. Ready matters. I know this in my head. My body knows it too, because it keeps showing up even on days when my wrists throb before I even clock in.
What wears on me is not the physical part. I can handle sore hands. I can handle standing all day. What wears on me is how easy it is to feel like a moving part instead of a person. People talk over me while grabbing what they need. They leave carts half emptied and assume someone else will deal with it. They rarely say thank you, not because they are cruel, but because the system does not ask them to see me.
By the end of my shift, my shoulders feel tight in a way that does not go away when I roll them. I push the squeaking cart back to its corner and line things up for the next shift. There is a small satisfaction in leaving it neat, even if no one notices. Sometimes I stand there for a second longer than I need to, just to feel like the day is done, even though it will start again the same way tomorrow.
I have learned to read the hospital by sound. I know when the emergency department is busy just by how fast the carts come back. I know when a floor is short staffed because the requests pile up at once, clipped notes stuck to bins like afterthoughts. There is a tension that travels through the building, and even though I am tucked away, it reaches me every time.
People assume that working behind the scenes means you do not carry the same weight. That you are protected somehow. But invisibility has its own pressure. When no one sees you, they also do not see when you are tired, or when you have already given what you had for the day. There is no place to put that feeling, so it settles in your chest instead.
I catch myself counting more than I need to. Counting stacks. Counting minutes until break. Counting how many times someone walks past without looking at me. I do not think I am angry exactly. It is more like a low hum of resentment that never quite shuts off. I resent being necessary but unnoticed. I resent being depended on but rarely addressed.
Breaks are quiet in a strange way. The break room smells like coffee and cleaning spray. People sit with their phones and scroll, eyes glazed, shoulders slumped. We do not talk much. Everyone is tired in their own way. When someone does speak, it is usually about schedules or overtime or a rumor about management. No one says what they actually feel. That feels dangerous somehow, like it might spill if we start.
At home, I try to shake the day off before I go inside. I sit in the car for a minute with my hands in my lap. My wrists ache most then, when I stop moving. I flex my fingers and feel the stiffness work itself loose slowly. The silence helps, even if it also gives my thoughts more room than I want.
I am not looking for praise. I do not need applause for folding sheets. What I want is acknowledgment. A sense that the work is seen, not just consumed. That someone understands that smooth systems are built on people doing repetitive things carefully, day after day. When that care is invisible, it starts to feel like it belongs to no one, and that makes it harder to keep giving it.
Some days I fantasize about walking away from the cart mid shift, just to see what would happen. Not because I would ever do it, but because imagining it proves how much I am holding together. The thought passes, and I keep folding. I always do. Responsibility has a way of rooting itself deep, even when it is rarely thanked.
I do not talk about this much at work. Complaining feels risky, like it could be mistaken for weakness or ingratitude. So I carry it quietly. I find small ways to remind myself that I am more than a pair of hands feeding a system that never slows down. Sometimes that looks like stepping outside for air. Sometimes it looks like reading something that reminds me I am not alone in feeling caught between usefulness and exhaustion.
One evening, after a long shift where everything felt off by half an inch, I sat down and read a blog post someone shared online about being in an in-between place in life. It was not about my job at all. But it still helped me. I think the author felt the same way - that doing necessary work can still leave you feeling unseen. Reading it helped me feel better.
The next day, nothing changed on the floor. The cart still squeaked. The stacks still needed folding. But I felt slightly less alone inside my own head. That mattered more than I expected. It made it easier to keep my shoulders relaxed. It made it easier to remind myself that invisibility does not mean insignificance, even when it feels that way.
I am still quietly resentful some days. I do not think that will disappear. But I am also learning that resentment does not mean I am wrong to care. It means I have been giving attention to something that does not give it back. Naming that helps. It takes away some of its power.
When I finish a shift now, I still line everything up neatly. That part of me has not changed. What has changed is that I give myself credit for it, even if no one else does. I let myself acknowledge that this work keeps things moving, even when it stays out of sight. I remind myself that being unseen does not erase effort.
I do not need the job to love me back. I just need to remember that I exist outside of it. That I have a voice, even if I use it quietly. That there are other people, in other places, feeling the same tension between being needed and being noticed. Holding onto that thought makes it easier to push the cart one more time, even when it squeaks.
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