The Plan · Second Shift · Pulse Beat
Nobody knew, except her friend Sunita, who thought she was mad. The plan was seven years long. Nurse by night, study by day, sleep somewhere in between. The entrance exam for medical college came…
Nobody knew, except her friend Sunita, who thought she was mad.
The plan was seven years long. Nurse by night, study by day, sleep somewhere in between. The entrance exam for medical college came once a year, and she had missed it twice, once for a family funeral and once because she had mistaken a date. She had told herself this year would be the year.
"You're thirty next year," Sunita said, over tea in the canteen. "You'd be a doctor at thirty-seven."
"I'd be a doctor at thirty-seven," said Fatima. "Or I'd be a nurse at thirty-seven. The difference is I will have tried."
"And Imran?"
She did not answer. Imran was a bank clerk in Thane, a kind and patient man who had been waiting two years for her to say yes. His mother had stopped asking about her. His sister had stopped inviting her to lunch.
"One more year," said Fatima. "I'm asking him for one more year."
"You asked him last year."