Second Shift · Second Shift · Pulse Beat
She works nights still, sometimes, by choice. Dr Fatima Sheikh, Consultant in Internal Medicine, Ward 7, is known for her rounds. She walks the length of the ward at midnight with a torch shaded by…
She works nights still, sometimes, by choice.
Dr Fatima Sheikh, Consultant in Internal Medicine, Ward 7, is known for her rounds. She walks the length of the ward at midnight with a torch shaded by her palm, checking the drips, the charts, the long rows of sleepers. The junior doctors follow her, tired and eager, and she teaches them the way she taught herself: in the dark, in the gaps, one honest question at a time.
On the desk, in the yellow circle of the lamp, there is a small spiral notebook with a rubber band round it. On the cover, in her neat capitals: NIGHT 1. It is for the students. Each one writes their first question in it, and the next night, she answers.
At home, in the flat above the radio shop in Thane, her husband is mending something, and her mother, whose hands are quiet now, is asleep in the next room. The kettle is on. She will be back at dawn, with a bag of oranges, and sit with him on the balcony, in the cool, and tell him about the night.
It is a second shift, and a second life. It is, she thinks, the only one that she would have chosen.