The Decision · Second Shift · Pulse Beat
She thought about it for nine days. She worked her shifts, carefully now, with the notebook left in the locker. She went home and sat with her mother in the steam of the kitchen. She did not study…
She thought about it for nine days.
She worked her shifts, carefully now, with the notebook left in the locker. She went home and sat with her mother in the steam of the kitchen. She did not study. For the first time in six years she lay on her bed in the afternoons staring at the ceiling, hearing the sewing machine through the wall.
On the ninth night, at three, in the lull, Mr Rao, who had been discharged a week before and had come back, quite unexpectedly, as a visitor, appeared at the desk. He was in a clean shirt, with a rolled umbrella. "I was passing," he said, which was a lie.
"You shouldn't be here, Mr Rao."
"I know. I wanted to give you something." He put a small packet on the desk, wrapped in brown paper. Inside was a worn copy of a book, The Language of Medicine, inscribed in a spidery hand: To my best student, who never became a doctor. —R.K. Rao. And below, in the same ink: Be better than I could.
She could not speak.
"I read the letter you wrote me, Sister," he said gently. "The one in your notebook. It was on the floor."