Zelda used to wear blazers and heels. Now, she was Googling the best way to remove feces from Crocs.

Thirteen years in real estate. Top producer. Local awards. Signs with her name on them were hammered into every decent lawn in town. She was the one who brought the cookies to open houses, the one who knew what granite actually cost, and the one who could talk a cranky buyer out of a mortgage meltdown like a damn therapist. But all that meant exactly nothing in the post-pandemic housing apocalypse.

The pandemic years between 2020 and 2023 were fantastic. It was a perfect storm of rock bottom interest rates and people who were scared to death of a worldwide pandemic. Buyers were like prison rats on a Cheeto, panic buying properties as soon as they hit the market. Then everything shut down, almost overnight, her sales took a nosedive. Then inflation skyrocketed, interest rates danced like they were drunk, and Sleepy Joe piled on a mess of economic decisions that made buying a home feel like investing in a sinking ship. And then there was the National Association of Realtors, who had practically signed a deal with the devil in the form of lawsuits and backstabbing “leadership.” Zelda couldn’t keep track anymore—rules changed, ethics changed, and frankly, everything changed.

The overnight halt was stunning. She went from negotiating six offers in one day to nothing. Crickets. No calls, no closings, just her and her thoughts—and three teenage daughters asking for Dutch Bros and Lululemon like she wasn’t down to coupon-level budgeting. And then there was her son, 8 years old and absolutely obsessed with sports. Baseball, football, basketball—you name it. If there was a ball, he was chasing it. And sports gear wasn’t cheap. Especially when he grew out of his cleats every other month like it was a personal hobby.

And that’s when it hit her: she needed to pivot. Fast. And what do you do when your carefully built career implodes? You go back to wiping asses. At 44.

She sat in the CNA classroom wearing leggings and a slouchy cardigan, hair in a messy half-bun, trying not to visibly cringe as the instructor demonstrated bedpan technique on a mannequin named Judy. She hadn't worn scrubs since she was 19. Before she became a stay-at-home mom for seven years, before she stepped into real estate with a dream and a knockoff Louis Vuitton bag. But CNA work was something she knew, something tangible. People always needed their butts wiped—especially in America, where the elderly outnumber patience by a wide margin.

The other students were mostly in their early twenties, bright-eyed and talking about nursing school or radiology tech programs. Zelda didn’t relate to their TikTok slang, but they reminded her of her girls—sweet, naïve, and slightly terrified of adulting. They called her “Z,” thought she was 35, and asked for skincare tips. She liked them more than most realtors she’d known. Still, a part of her felt like she’d failed.

She wasn’t supposed to end up back here, in a folding chair on cracked linoleum floors, highlighting textbook passages about infection control and how to roll someone without throwing out your back. But here she was, repeating history—only now with plantar fasciitis and a Costco-size bottle of ibuprofen.

“This job is beneath me,” she thought that first week. “Literally and figuratively.”

But then she remembered the last listing she took. The seller insisted their house was worth $150,000 more than it was, smelled like cat piss and desperation, and accused her of “not marketing to the right people” after one open house. Zelda would rather empty a bedpan than deal with that level of delusion again.

So she stayed. And she studied. And in between learning the new protocol for adult briefs and packing lunches for her son’s Little League double-headers, she started to feel something unfamiliar again. Maybe not pride. But purpose. Even if it came with latex gloves.