There are drills…
and then there are Drills.
Hospital protocol requires a fire drill every 90 days.
They send out emails no one reads. Hang bright signs no one notices.
Then they set off the alarm, watch everyone pretend to care, and log it in a spreadsheet buried under digital dust.
But this time, it didn't feel like a drill.
This time, it felt… real.
It started with smoke in the east stairwell.
Just enough to raise concern.
Not enough to trigger the sprinklers.
A haze that hung in the air like doubt.
I was in the break room when it happened. Half a granola bar in my mouth, scrolling through unread texts, when the alarm screeched to life.
"CODE RED. FIRE DRILL INITIATED. EAST WING EVACUATION IN PROGRESS."
I watched as everyone around me reacted like clockwork actors—standing, grabbing clipboards, shuffling out with forced urgency.
No one panicked.
But no one trusted it was fake, either.
I headed for the stairwell, not sure why.
Maybe curiosity.
Maybe instinct.
That's when I saw him.
Everett.
Standing near the exit door, eyes fixed on the smoke as it curled around the hallway corner.
Mop in hand.
Unbothered.
Still.
Like the fire would come to him, not the other way around.
"You're not evacuating?" I asked.
He shook his head.
"Fire's not the problem."
I blinked.
"…What?"
He leaned slightly on the mop handle.
"People think panic happens because of fire. But it starts way before that. Panic happens when people realize they've been asleep too long."
He turned his head toward the stairs.
"The drill isn't for the fire. It's to see who wakes up."
I didn't have time to figure out what that meant because just then, someone ran down the hallway yelling, "Patient in Room 412 can't be moved! She's intubated!"
Staff scattered. Orders barked. Pages buzzed.
The smoke was getting thicker now—still harmless, still synthetic, but starting to feel real.
I looked back at Everett.
He was gone.
Just… gone.
Room 412 was three doors down.
I pushed inside and found her—the patient. Elderly. Hooked to machines. Eyes closed but twitching.
A nurse stood frozen in the doorway.
"We can't unplug her," she said. "And there's no transport ready."
"Where's the code team?" I asked.
"Still upstairs. They haven't gotten down here yet."
I was about to say something else when I heard it.
The squeak.
The wheels of a mop bucket echoing down the hallway like a prophecy.
He came in through the side entrance, pulling the bucket like it was a cart full of tools.
Except it wasn't full of mops.
It was full of oxygen masks, blankets, extra tubing, and a portable fan.
I don't even know how he had access to that stuff.
I don't even know where he got it.
But he walked in like he knew he would need it. Like the smoke had called him.
He placed the fan in the corner. Plugged it into a wall socket. Aimed it low, toward the base of the door.
The air started to clear.
He handed the nurse a mask.
"Put this on her. Keep her calm."
Then he turned to me.
"Drills are just rehearsals," he said. "But this?"
He nodded toward the patient.
"This is the real scene. This is what they forget to prepare for."
By the time the emergency response team arrived, the room was already stable.
They looked around like they were late to their own story.
"Who brought the mobile setup?" one of them asked.
I opened my mouth to answer—
but Everett was already gone.
Just a faint citrus scent lingering in the air.
Like lemon.
And smoke.
And something older than both.
Later that day, I found the mop bucket parked outside the janitor's closet.
There was a note taped to it.
Typed. Laminated.
"Some fires aren't flames.
Some smoke is just what rises when truth starts to burn.
Don't wait for the alarms.
Feel the heat.
Move accordingly."
— Dr. Everett, Department of Preventative Reflection
I didn't hear a single person talk about the smoke afterward.
But I did hear rumors.
Not about a drill.
Not about a patient.
But about the janitor.
Someone said he wheeled in a crash cart once, three seconds before a patient coded—without being paged.
Someone else said he cleared a hallway before an oxygen tank leak caused a minor explosion—six years ago.
There's no record of either.
But people remember.
And when I passed the fire exit later that week, someone had written in black marker above the doorframe:
"If Everett stays, you stay."
No one erased it.