Bed Fourteen on the Night Shift

At three in the morning the ward is never quite silent. A monitor beeps somewhere down the row. An electric fan turns its head from side to side. Outside, a jeepney passes on the wet road, and its engine rattles the louvred windows. Marites stands at the nurses' station with a cup of coffee that went cold an hour ago.

She has eleven patients tonight. Two new admissions, one fever that will not break, one IV line that keeps blocking. Her feet ache inside her white shoes. Her phone has a message from her sister in Dubai that she has not had time to read. She has been on duty since seven in the evening.

She does her rounds with a small torch so as not to wake anyone. At bed fourteen, the torch catches two open eyes. Lolo Ernesto is eighty-one. He came in two days ago with pneumonia. His family visits in the afternoons, but at night there is no one. He is holding the bed rail so tightly that his knuckles are pale.

“Nurse,” he whispers. “Am I dying?”

Marites glances down the row. The fever in bed nine is due for a check. The charting is behind. Every part of her training says: reassure him, check his oxygen, move on. She checks his oxygen. It is fine. She opens her mouth to say “You are okay, Lolo, sleep na po,” and go.

Instead she pulls the plastic stool closer and sits down. It is the first time she has sat down since midnight.

She had read the verse that week, on the bus, from the small Bible she keeps in her bag. Jesus describing the day of judgement, and the King saying to the surprised people on his right, “I was sick, and ye visited me.” What had stayed with her was the surprise. They did not know they were doing it for him. They were just there.

So she is just there. She asks Lolo Ernesto where he grew up. Batangas, he says, near the sea. He tells her about his late wife's sinigang, too sour, he says, but he ate it every Sunday for fifty years. His grip on the rail loosens. She does not promise him anything she cannot promise. She tells him the doctor will come at seven, and that she will check on him again at four. Then she does.

Five minutes. That is all it was. The charting was still behind at the end of the shift, and the handover was rushed, and her feet still ached on the long ride home. Not every night has a moment like that. Many nights are only work, done as well as she can manage.

But on the bus she finally read her sister's message, and replied, and then sat with her eyes closed while the city woke up around her. She thought about the King's words again. Sick, and ye visited me. She had not visited anyone. She had only sat on a plastic stool. Perhaps, she thought, that was the point.