It was the fourth week in a row that had required this. Every day ending with a phone call she didn't want to take, and every morning starting with the email from the same person about the same problem. She was getting through it. She wasn't breaking. But something in her had gone quiet in a way that was not peaceful. Her laugh was slower to come. She had stopped suggesting things in meetings, not out of fear, just out of not having the fuel. She looked at her calendar for the week ahead and did not react. There was no reacting left; there was just doing the next thing and the next thing and the next.