There's a drawer in the HR office labeled CONFIDENTIAL, but everyone knows it's the folder graveyard.
It's where letters of resignation go.
Where complaints are "reviewed."
Where people leave a trace, but not a legacy.
Today, that drawer opened again.
A resident quit.
Dr. Miller. Third year.
The one with the tired eyes and caffeine breath. The one who used to stay late just to make the med students laugh.
The one who, lately, stopped laughing altogether.
I heard about it before I saw it.
Whispers at the nurse's station.
"She just… left?"
"Burnout?"
"No, something about losing herself."
By the time I found her, she was sitting alone in the staff lounge, cardboard box in her lap.
Half-filled. A couple of books. A phone charger. A stethoscope with a cracked earpiece.
I stood in the doorway for a moment before stepping in.
"You good?" I asked.
She didn't look up.
"Honestly? I don't know what 'good' means anymore."
I nodded, sitting across from her.
"I used to think I wanted this," she said. "Medicine. Purpose. Helping people. Now I just want… quiet. Something real. Something that doesn't feel like I'm constantly drowning in expectations."
That's when the door creaked open.
And of course—
he walked in.
Mop in one hand.
Lollipop in the other.
Everett.
Dr. Janitor.
He didn't say anything at first.
Just handed the lollipop to her, like it was a prescription.
She blinked at it.
"…Is this a joke?"
"Nope," he said. "It's cherry."
She stared at him for a second, then laughed—soft, unsure, like someone remembering how to breathe.
"I used to want to be a surgeon," she said.
Her voice was quiet. Tired.
He nodded.
"I used to want to be invisible," he replied.
That made her pause.
She looked up.
"What changed?"
He sat down slowly, the mop resting against the vending machine like a loyal hound.
"I figured out that when no one's watching, you get to be real."
He unwrapped his own lollipop, popped it in his mouth, and added:
"And when you're real long enough… the right people notice."
The silence that followed wasn't awkward.
It was safe.
She finally asked, "So… what is it you actually do here?"
He looked at her.
"I clean," he said. "Spills. Trash. Scratches that no one reports.
But mostly? I stick around long enough to mop up after people's breakdowns."
She smiled—small, but honest.
"Are you even on payroll?"
"No idea. I stopped checking after they gave me my own supply closet."
I watched her shoulders lower, like some invisible weight slid off.
She glanced at the box in her lap.
"I don't even know where I'm going," she admitted.
Everett leaned back, tapping the stick of the lollipop against his teeth.
"Good," he said.
She blinked. "Good?"
"Yeah. Means you're not running to escape. You're walking toward something. You just don't know what it is yet."
She laughed again. This time, it sounded like herself.
Then she asked him, quietly:
"Do you think I failed?"
Everett looked at her for a long second, like he was reading her soul through hospital lighting.
Then he said:
"Failure's when you keep going just to prove you're not broken. But leaving? That takes honesty. And honesty's rare in this place."
I walked her out an hour later.
She didn't take much. Just the box, the lollipop, and a new kind of silence—peaceful this time.
Before she stepped outside, she turned and asked me, "Is he always like that?"
"Who? The janitor?"
She nodded.
I shrugged.
"I think he's just someone who decided to stop pretending."
She nodded slowly, then walked away.
No ceremony. No applause.
Just a quiet exit.
I found Everett later that evening in the stairwell, sitting two steps up with his mop laid across his lap like a relic. He was looking out the narrow window—watching the sky shift from day to night, like it was a patient trying to decide whether to live or let go.
"Ever think about leaving?" I asked him.
He didn't look over.
"Every day," he said.
"But you stay?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
He turned finally.
"Because someone's gotta mop the places no one else will go."
I sat down beside him.
"You really think what you do matters?"
He smiled.
"Every person who falls, burns out, or breaks down leaves something behind."
He paused.
"I'm not here to fix them. I'm here to clean the part they were forced to leave messy."
I didn't respond right away.
But I thought about Miller.
About the towel he left in Kinley's hallway.
About the way he said nothing, but meant everything.
I think some people are assigned to save lives.
Others are placed here to witness them.
And some…
some are meant to mop up what others try to forget.