The empty waiting room of the mind

Last night I dreamed I was back in the OR, but the table was empty. All the equipment was there, lights on, scrub nurse holding a clamp, but no patient. I woke up with that hollow feeling you get when you've been called to a room that doesn't need you. It made me think about all the conversations we never have — the ones we rehearse on the bus, the apologies we craft, the words we leave unsaid. Maybe that's what loneliness really is: a room full of instruments and no one to operate on.