INT. HOSPITAL WARD - CORRIDOR - NIGHT
Sam comes out of the sluice room drying their hands, sees the colleague about to speak, and holds up one finger.
Don't say 'sleep on it'. I've slept on it for eleven years. Tonight I did the drugs round, and then I did the obs, and then I sat with Mr Okafor while he asked me to open the window so he could hear the rain, and I said 'in a minute'. And I meant it. I was going to.
It wasn't a bad night. That's the thing. Nobody arrested. The pump on four behaved for once, and the agency girl turned out to be brilliant. It was a normal night, I did everything right, and I have just stood in the sluice room for twenty minutes because I couldn't remember whether I'd opened his window or only thought about it.
I went back. It was shut. He was asleep. So it didn't matter, in the sense that nothing happened, and it mattered more than anything, because I've become someone who says 'in a minute' to a man who has asked for one thing.
You know what I used to be like. You used to tell me off for it. Sitting on the beds. Learning the grandchildren's names. I had Bed Six's daughter's phone number in my pocket for a week once because she'd want to know. I'm not that any more, and I've been telling myself it's the rota, it's the staffing, it's the winter, and it is all of those, and it's also that I'm forty eight and the thing I was good at has worn through in the middle like a sock.
Handover's at seven. I'll do it properly, everything written up. Then I'm going to go and open that window, because it's still raining. Then I'm going home and I'm not setting an alarm. You can have my good pen.