Handoff
4 min read
The ward at five in the morning. The floor has been mopped twice since midnight. The second time was hers. Orange-brown light on the wet linoleum. The floor was sticky outside Room 12. The smell was there. The mop was there. Three-forty.
Six patients tonight.
Mr. Carvalho in 8. The catheter needs watching.
The woman in 10 whose name she can never hold. A sequence of syllables that arrive in her mouth wrong every time. She says “good evening” and “how are we” and “I’ll be back in an hour.” Never uses the name.
Her shoes on the linoleum. Soft-soled, worn uneven on the left where her gait pulls slightly inward. A physio told her about it once. She ignored him. The shoes were broken in.
The teenager in 14 broke his femur skateboarding. Watches videos on his phone with the volume too loud until she tells him. Then too quiet. Then off entirely. At one in the morning she found him staring at the ceiling with the screen dark. His eyes open. She closed the door.
Room 11 is empty. The sheets are fresh. It was not empty at the start of the shift. She charted the time, the circumstances. Called who needed calling. Stripped the bed herself. The aide was with Mr. Carvalho. She folds a hospital corner the way Glória taught her. Glória worked this ward for thirty-one years, retired on a Tuesday, dead by the following April. Tight. It holds.
In the break room there is a mug that says PAULO on it in hand-painted blue letters. It has been on the shelf since before she started on this ward. Nobody called Paulo works here. Nobody has ever claimed it. The paint is chipping on the P. She drinks from it. It’s the largest mug on the shelf.
She drinks her coffee. The ward is quiet. The monitors make their sounds.
At three, she was doing rounds. The corridor outside Room 9 has a window that faces east. In March it is just dark, the glass a black mirror with her reflection passing through it in her scrubs, her bad shoes, the lanyard with her photo from six years ago when her hair was longer.
Room 9. Mr. Oliveira. Seventy-three. Hip replacement, day four, recovery unremarkable. She checked the drip, checked the chart, checked the catheter bag. All of it fine. All of it charted. She turned to leave.
He was humming.
His eyes were closed, his mouth slightly open, the breath steady and slow. Somewhere in the breath there was a melody. A sequence of five or six notes that rose and fell and rose again, each time slightly different.
She stood in the doorway. The corridor light behind her, the room dark except for the monitor’s blue. He hummed it twice through. The second time the notes settled into something more certain, a shape that almost held before the breath shifted. The humming stopped.
She did not go in. She did not chart it. She stood for perhaps ten seconds after the humming stopped.
Then she moved on. Room 10. The woman whose name she can’t hold.
Six forty-five. The day shift arrives. Louder shoes. Fresh coffee smell. Bags put down hard. Sara comes in first, she always comes in first.
The handoff. Patient, room, condition, overnight events, pending orders, concerns. She does it standing at the nurses’ station with the chart open and her notes in the shorthand she has used for eleven years.
Room 8, Mr. Carvalho. Catheter output low after midnight, increased fluids at 0200, output improved by 0400. Monitor.
Room 9, Mr. Oliveira. Unremarkable. Vitals stable. Day four, on track.
Room 10. She says the name. It comes out wrong. Sara doesn’t notice or doesn’t correct her.
Room 11. She pauses. Empty. Transferred to the morgue at 0117. The name, the time, the chart is complete.
Room 12. The mop.
Room 14. The boy. Sleeping now. Didn’t sleep until late. Keep the volume conversation going, he responds to tone more than instruction.
Sara writes it all down.
Seven fifteen. The car park is cold and the light is that thin grey that Lisbon does in March. Her car is where she left it.
She sits in the driver’s seat for a moment before starting the engine. Her feet ache in the left shoe. Her back holds twelve hours of standing, walking, bending. The one time she crouched to mop outside Room 12.
She starts the car. The radio comes on, already tuned to something she doesn’t remember selecting. She turns it off. Drives.
The road home is fifteen minutes of empty intersections, closed shops, a bakery on the Rua da Prata already lit from inside, the baker visible through the window in whites, pulling something from the oven.
She is humming. Five or six notes that rise and fall and rise again, each time slightly different. Her hands on the wheel, the grey light coming in, the road empty.