Extract from The Night Shift

In the staff changing room, the junior doctor yawns, oblivious to the chaos on the other side of the door. She looks at her watch, her mouth and jaw trembling as she tries to prevent another yawn. 2:30am. Only half an hour late finishing, not bad. She pulls out her hair band, releasing some of the tension that had been building up in her temples. She glances at herself in the mirror and zig zags her fingers through her dark blonde hair, trying to make it look less greasy. Lost cause. Whatever, I’m only going home, she thinks, giving up. She yawns properly this time, squeezing her eyes closed and realising just how dry they are. She presses the palms of her hands against them and they sting as they start to water.
She is pulling off her green scrub t-shirt, when her bleeper goes off, making her heart sink a little. She stops, like a half dressed mannequin, waiting for the inevitable follow up. The staff room door opens, letting in the familiar noises from the A&E department. A nurse pokes her head round. “Sorry, Doctor. RTA,” the nurse’s head disappears, letting the door slowly fall shut.
The doctor sighs. So close! she thinks. She reluctantly shoves her arm back through the scrubs, and hastily ties her hair back up into a messy bun on top of her head. Focus. You’ll need to for a car accident, she tells herself. She gulps down some water from the fountains and splashes some on her face, then opens the door and steps back out into the night shift.

***

The alarm will drag her from a drug-aided deep sleep. It will play an annoyingly optimistic tune, which will counter the aggressive vibration against the wooden floor, where it will lie next to an empty wine glass and a half empty bottle of Temazepam. Her hand will fumble to find it, to put it on snooze so that she may disappear back into unconsciousness for another nine minutes. Just a little longer. But it will be futile; the alarm will go off again, and this time she will have to force herself to sit up. You can’t be late, not for this, get up, she will tell herself. She will push herself to sit up on the mattress, feeling every spring as she does so. She will yawn, and then she will remember, and then she’ll push the memory away just as she has for the last two weeks. She still cannot think of it, even though she will be forced to relive it later. Instead, she will think again about how she needs to replace the bed that Danny took when he left. That it will have been almost four months since she’s slept in a proper bed with a decent mattress. She’ll pick up the wine glass to see if there’s any left, and then she will think, What am I doing? Not today. She’ll grab the glass of water instead, and down it in one go.
She will force herself to get up and stumble to the bathroom. She won’t have been up this early for two weeks. She’ll avoid her eye-contact in the mirror above the sink as she brushes her teeth, which is some challenge given how small the bathroom is, instead she will stare at the other toothbrush in the pot. Some blood will be mixed in with the white lather of the toothpaste when she spits it out, but she’ll barely notice, she will still be staring at Danny’s toothbrush. Go to the dentist, love, you don’t look after yourself properly, too busy looking after everyone else.
The grey cotton pyjamas will be dropped on the floor and she will step carefully into the shower. She’ll let the scolding hot water wash over her, enjoying the feeling of the water being too hot. Her long hair, which she won’t have washed for four days, will darken into a dirty blonde as it soaks up the water, forming long yellow rats’ tails. She will scrub herself a little too hard with the loofah, making her skin turn red, when the tears will come, too suddenly to stop, and a hard lump will form in her throat. She will fall to her knees and she will weep, and the water will continue to drench her.