Audrey Ortega

My name is Audrey Ortega, I'm 33 and I live in Querétaro, in central Mexico. I'm an ER nurse at a public hospital, and for the last six years I've worked the night shift, which I fell into by accident and have refused to leave ever since.

My life runs against everyone else's clock. I have breakfast while you have dinner, I do my grocery shopping at five in the afternoon looking freshly unearthed, and I know every sound my neighborhood makes between nine in the morning and four in the afternoon: the gas truck, the garbage truck, the neighbor with the drill.

I'm the middle of three sisters. Andrea is the oldest and the organizer; Lucía is the youngest and the one who moved away. I'm the one who shows up late to the group chat and reads the fights after they've already been settled. We love each other loudly, as one should.

This year I signed up for my first half marathon, in a moment of weakness and with a cookie in my hand. I run slowly, I run in the afternoons, and I run to get a kind of tired that belongs to me instead of to the hospital.

You won't find gory details or anyone's name here. My patients belong to themselves, not to me. What you will find is what sticks to me afterward: four in the morning, unfinished stories, the dark humor that keeps us in one piece.

I write this blog because I sometimes feel like I live in a different time zone, and I wanted some proof that things happen here too.