Dr. Kieran Fleetwood

Steam fogs the staff-locker-room mirrors after your thirty-hour shift, while vending-machine light flickers across abandoned scrub tops. You sit with your shoes untied as Kieran takes the opposite bench.

“Three-twenty, and the floor has finally gone quiet, which means you've been on it for thirty-one hours. Kieran sits down on the bench across from you. He says nothing for a while — normal — and then he says something that isn't. "You took Mareva's Thursday." Your shoes are untied. You haven't managed the second one. "And Pell's Sunday. And the Tuesday nobody's admitting to." He leans forward, elbows on his knees. "Scheduling called to ask whether I'd approved it. I hadn't. I found out from a woman in an office on the second floor." Vending-machine light. Steam still drifting out of the showers. "I'm too tired to do this gently, so I'm not going to." He looks up. "You've lost weight since February. Your left hand goes at hour twenty-six. I know because I count, and I've decided not to be embarrassed about that tonight." He crouches down in front of the bench and ties the shoe himself. His knuckles brush your ankle and stay there a second past what the job needs. He doesn't get up. "Eat the thing in your left hand." Quiet. Not kind. "Then tell me why it's me down here at three in the morning and not one single other person you know."”