Night Shift
By Philip Charter
The evening light fades as Alisha Mensah walks up New Cross Road to the Number 21 bus stop. Accra is four thousand miles to the south, held by the line Greenwich Mean Time. She commutes in London’s sister city — the one that emerges well after office hours, with cleaning crews on the way to work, shopkeepers closing up, and men unloading boxes from unmarked vans. They are night workers, too. As a newly-qualified nurse, Alisha was put on nights. Now she spends more time here than in ‘day London’.
The driver of the 21 to London Bridge greets her with a glint of recognition. “Evening, miss.”
Kwame wears a stud earring, too, but a half-carat doesn’t get you any points on a visa application. She had to leave without him. Alisha smiles at the driver and scans her Oyster card.
The plastic surfaces give off the same sterile smell as the hospital ward, like it’s baked in. Sometimes, Alisha imagines doing a driving job at night, blending into the background of other people’s worlds and keeping the city running. Robert, her silversmithing tutor, says she must find her identity, her creative voice, her sense of adventure. Who wants to buy plain wedding bands nowadays? If she had her own studio, she would work through the night, enveloped by quiet.
Alisha watches the city go by, just as she does from the kitchen of her shared ground-floor flat. She cooks in the afternoon because her flatmates don’t like the smell of yams at seven in the morning. Besides, they’re busy making coffees from their sparkling machine. The bus stops at the lights, next to a street cleaner chasing the last pieces of fluttering litter.
Esi has identity. Plenty of it. Her sister, also a nurse in the sweltering chaos of Accra’s Ridge Hospital, flashes brilliant white teeth at patients. “Why do you put up with it, sister? Working in the dark like a zombie.” The rest of the family know to keep quiet until the cheque arrives at the Western Union. Kwame didn’t wait long to move on. He and Esi suit each other.
When Alisha arrives at the hospital, she assumes her routine. She signs in, gets changed, and receives her briefing from the staff nurse. Most girls going off shift don’t want to talk. A quick ‘have a good one,’ is all they offer. Alisha is left to act as a caretaker. The elderly need a lot of care.
The air in the hospital is still. There’s the occasional emergency or even death, but she mostly monitors and maintains. She goes from ward to ward accompanied by the hiss of respirators, the hum of air driven mattresses, and the sounds of distant doors swinging open and shut. On her rounds, she rolls immobile patients and checks that charts show all the right numbers. In ward E5, she glances out. Activity around the tube station has slowed to a standstill, and her eye draws up the great dark needle of The Shard. She snaps a picture of the lights blinking across the Thames and sends it to her sister. They do this, the sisters, sending each other photos of their opposite worlds. The pictures are the first thing they see when they wake up.
“Well hello, luvvie,” says Mrs. Wellingborough a little too loudly, as Alisha enters the next dimly lit ward. She’s recovering from a hip replacement. “The negress of the night returns, eh?”
Negress is definitely not the right term these days. “Good evening, Mrs.” replies Alisha, in a hushed voice so as not to disturb the other patients in the room. She smiles a calm smile.
“The ache’s back tonight. Bloody thing.”
Alisha looks over the notes at the end of her bed. “You had a dose of painkillers before dinner, is that right?”
Mrs. Wellingborough touches the silver cross around her neck and tries to shift herself to more of a sitting position.
“Oh, I can help you.” Alisha operates the bed to bring her upright. “There.”
“I think I need another injection. This pain’s not letting me sleep.”
Alisha goes to prepare the medication, but when she returns Mrs. Wellingborough has drifted off.
Kwame wears a lot of jewelry — heavy chains that clink. Is that why she chose to take a part-time course, to melt down and reform ugly memories? Her sister buys clothes. Whatever’s in. Of course, earrings and necklaces are not permitted on the ward, but she will make something that people ask about.
During the night shift, Alisha walks thousands of steps between wards. She glides along the corridors and opens and closes doors with great care. She wears a sheepskin jacket over her uniform, even though most of the staff find the temperature quite warm. On her breaks, she eats a packet of crisps and drinks a cup of tea. Her family jokes about the tea. So very British. As if it is some kind of potion that makes you walk with a straight back and look down your nose.
Mr. Bennett in bed 81B tells her that he has passed one of his kidney stones. "Ms. Mensah, you really are a hero," he says. A hero. She beams a smile, and for a moment envies her sister’s good teeth. Mr. Bennett had no visitors, so Alisha brought him red bean broth to aid the passing of the stones. He did not like the taste one bit. "Like a one pence piece it was." For once she is not a star, or an angel, but a hero.
Not every patient will recover like Mr. Bennett. Some have restless nights. Some are unhappy. Some will die. All Alisha can do is do her best to maintain and repair these broken people, just as she does with the trinkets she buys at Portobello Road Market. They have parts which can either be fixed, or they can’t. It’s simple. Relationships need makers and fixers to survive. Kwame would never make any decisions, he would always follow, picking up the pieces like a hen pecking at the ground.
At a quarter to seven, Alisha debriefs the staff nurse, signs out and gets changed. The day-shift nurses wave hello. They’ve had to get up early and travel in the dark along with thousands of other weary commuters. They haven’t had their coffee yet. ‘Everything OK last night?’ they say, hoping for a one-word response. Don’t they know that patients heal more during the night than on their shift?
“See you again tonight,” says Alisha, and heads out into the dawn light. She calls back “Good luck and God bless.”
The morning is cold and clear. Alisha pulls her sheepskin jacket tight and begins the walk back to New Cross. The silver morning sun twists over the horizon as if dancing in passing with the dark. In Accra, it's different — the night slinks out to sea as orange rays shoot up, burning away any traces of black. Esi will be heading to the hospital to deal with the noise and motion of the city. After work, she will change from her whites into bright clothes to shine through the night. Kwame’s bracelets will glint and rattle as they walk hand in hand.
Alisha watches dogs pulling at their leads, eager to stretch their legs. Shopkeepers rebuild their window displays piece by piece. House lights go out for another day. When she arrives at her flat, she heats up her stew in the microwave. She eats while her flatmates Tanya and Evelyn fix their hair and rummage in their handbags.
“Mornin’ Leesh.”
“Good morning,” states Alisha. “No coffee today?”
“Nah. I’ve gotta be at King Cross by nine. I’ll get one there.”
“Oh, I thought the machine might be broken.”
Tanya laughs nervously. “I’d bloody die if it was broken.”
Alisha hoped it might be broken, then she could take it apart and put it back together again. Recently, her flatmates tried to teach her an expression about ‘ships in the night’ but she didn’t quite grasp it. Alisha thinks they are more like opposing magnets, repelled by her upside down life. Esi is different. Through the pictures they send each other, the phone calls with Kwame-shaped silences, memories of playing doctors and patients as children, and the straight line joining them from London to Accra, the sisters’ lives intertwine. Last week, Robert showed the class how to solder a twisted composite ring. The flow of platinum and gold was beautiful. Could it work with a darker metal? Titanium, stainless steel, zirconium.
After her meal, Alisha takes a cup of tea to her room. Once everyone is at work, there is quiet. This is usually the best time to visit antique shops or the library. Today she turns on her desk lamp and works on the design of her dual-twisted ring. She will tell Robert that this is her identity, her creative voice. The invisible solder that joins her to Esi cannot be melted and recast. It is set. If her design works, she will make two rings and send one to her sister's place in Ghana. No note, no explanation, just a picture of the ring on her finger.
Alisha takes one last look at the pencil drawing of her ring design, stands and switches off the desk lamp. She lowers the blackout blind and climbs into bed. By the time she wakes, the blanket of dusk will already be drawing down over London, and she will have a picture message waiting to be opened.
THE END
Author Bio: Philip Charter is a British writer who teaches writing to non-native English speakers. His work has been featured in The Lit Quarterly and Fictive Dream among other publications. In 2021, his story, “The Fisherwoman,” won the Loft Books Short Story Competition and was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Website: philipcharter.com