The air in the intake office was heavy with the smell of scorched coffee and the static electricity of 16 ancient desktop monitors. My jaw unhinged before I could stop it, a wide, cavernous yawn that felt like a betrayal of the woman sitting across from me. Her name was Laila, and she was currently describing the exact shade of the sky when she realized her house no longer had a roof. It was 4:06 PM. I didn’t want to yawn. It was an involuntary rebellion of the lungs, a desperate grab for oxygen in a room where the ventilation had been broken for at least 86 days. I saw her pause, her eyes flickering toward my open mouth, and the shame hit me like a physical weight.

I’ve spent 6 years as a refugee resettlement advisor, and yet here I was, looking like I’d rather be napping than listening to the architectural collapse of a life. I tried to cover it with a cough, but we both knew. The silence that followed was 26 seconds of pure, unadulterated discomfort. Sophie A.J., the professional, the advocate, the person who is supposed to be the bridge between terror and safety, was just a tired woman in a polyester blazer. I’ve made mistakes before-I once filed a family’s transit papers under the wrong province, a clerical error that delayed their arrival by 36 weeks-but this felt more intimate. It felt like I was admitting that their trauma had become, in some horrific way, mundane.

We are taught to wait for the right moment to act, to ensure the funding is secured and the legal pathways are paved with 66 layers of bureaucratic certainty. But readiness is a lie we tell ourselves to feel safe. In this office, we are never ready. We are usually just reacting to the latest 56-page directive from a government body that has never seen the inside of a transit camp. I remember a colleague who refused to process a single application until her desk was perfectly organized. She lasted 6 months. She was waiting for a peace that doesn’t exist in this sector. You have to work in the chaos, or the chaos works you.

I looked at the stack of 86 files on my left. Each one represented a person who was told to wait for the system to be ‘ready’ for them.

I see it in the way the children look at the linoleum floors-too clean, too sterile, nothing like the dirt they used to play in, which was dangerous but at least it was theirs. We trade their autonomy for our administrative comfort. I often wonder if we’re actually resettling them or just filing them away.

Laila shifted in her chair. It’s a cheap chair, the kind you get when the regional office decides to save $46 on furniture. I noticed she was staring at my desk lamp, which had a cracked base. I’ve been meaning to replace it. Actually, I remember when the budget was so tight we had to source our own equipment from a Push Store just to keep the printers running, which is pathetic when you’re handling the lives of 256 people a week. The lack of resources isn’t just a hurdle; it’s a message. It tells everyone in this room that they are a secondary priority to the bottom line of a departmental budget.

I’m not supposed to say that. I’m supposed to be the face of hope. But hope is exhausting. It requires a level of emotional labor that isn’t covered in the 66-page employee handbook. My digression into the logistics of office supplies is a defense mechanism, I know. It’s easier to be angry about a printer than it is to process the fact that Laila has been wearing the same pair of shoes for 156 miles of travel. They were once blue, I think. Now they are the color of the road. I wanted to apologize for the yawn, but how do you apologize for being human in a system that demands you be a machine?

I’ve realized that my best work doesn’t happen when I’m being the ‘perfect’ advisor. It happens when I admit I’m lost. Last year, I spent 46 minutes crying with a father who had lost his violin. It wasn’t professional. It didn’t get his visa processed any faster. But for those 46 minutes, he wasn’t a case number. He was a musician. We often confuse efficiency with efficacy. I can process 36 cases a day if I don’t look them in the eye, but what am I actually achieving? I’m just moving paper from the ‘in’ pile to the ‘out’ pile. The real resettlement happens in the cracks between the procedures.

Laila didn’t look away. She reached into her bag and pulled out a small, crushed sweet. It was wrapped in crinkly gold foil. She pushed it across the desk toward me. ‘You are tired,’ she said. It wasn’t an accusation. It was an observation of a shared state. In that moment, the power dynamic shifted. I wasn’t the savior and she wasn’t the victim. We were just two people sitting in a room with 6 broken lightbulbs, trying to survive the afternoon. I took the sweet. It tasted like honey and dust. It was probably the most honest thing that had happened in that office in 16 weeks.

I looked at Laila’s file again. Case number ending in 96. I’d highlighted her name 6 times in different colors, as if the neon ink could protect her from the upcoming interviews. I’ve made the mistake of thinking I can control the outcome. I can’t. I can only control how I show up in the 46 minutes I have with her. If that means I yawn, then I yawn. If it means I admit that the system is a labyrinth designed to tire us out, then I say it. There is a certain power in being honest about the failure of the structure. It’s only when we stop pretending the system works that we can start actually helping each other.

I think about the 126 miles she walked. I think about the 6 different languages she’s had to learn fragments of just to ask for water. And here I am, worrying about a yawn. It’s a strange form of narcissism, isn’t it? To make her tragedy about my fatigue. I need to be better at recognizing when my own ego is trying to take center stage. The yawn wasn’t about her; it was about the 256 other stories I’m carrying in my head, all of them screaming for attention at the same time. I need to learn how to put them down, one by 6 by 16, so I can actually see the person in front of me.

We finished the intake at 5:06 PM. As she stood up to leave, she smoothed her skirt-a gesture of dignity that broke my heart. She’s going to a temporary housing unit that has 6 bunk beds to a room. It’s not a home. It’s a holding pattern. I promised I would call her in 6 days. I usually try to call sooner, but I’ve learned that making promises you can’t keep is the quickest way to destroy what little trust is left in this world. I watched her walk down the hallway, her gait slightly heavy, a woman who has carried the world on her back for 36 years and is now being asked to wait in another line.

I stayed at my desk for another 26 minutes, just staring at the golden foil on my desk. The radiator clicked 6 times, a rhythmic metallic tapping that felt like a heartbeat. I’m not sure if I’m good at this job anymore, or if I ever was. But I know that tomorrow, at 9:06 AM, another person will sit in that chair. And I will listen. I will try not to yawn, but if I do, I hope I have the grace to admit that I’m just as exhausted by the distance between us as they are. This isn’t a job about answers. It’s a job about staying in the room when the questions get too loud. And maybe, if we’re lucky, we’ll find a way to rebuild the roof, one 6-inch beam at a time.