A 24-hour diner, a hospital late shift, a conversation you don’t want to end
As a student nurse I did an internship at Denmark’s largest psychiatric hospital. One stormy evening I worked my first night shift alone, on a ward for alcoholism and drug addiction. Ward D12 was situated in a villa a ten-minute bike ride from my dorm. On my way there I passed Ward H, the residence of mentally ill criminals, and I counted my blessings. At least I wasn’t headed there.
Just then I was blinded by a flashlight. I braked, and the man with the flashlight told me a search party was looking for an escaped patient from Ward H, who had stabbed a nurse and stolen her keys. I biked the rest of the way to D12 as fast as I could. Every sound made my heart jump.
The nurse I was relieving told me that the woman who’d been stabbed was dead, and the killer had gotten hold of a universal key that could open any building on the grounds. She predicted he would try to get as far away from the hospital as possible—unless he was looking for drugs and knew that extra medicines were stored in D12.
“What do I do if he comes here?” I asked.
“Unlock the medicine cabinet and let him take what he wants,” she said, and she left.
I locked the door behind her. The thought of sitting around waiting for a murderer to show up was unsettling. I told myself that if the killer did come, at least I would hear the door being unlocked.
At one o’clock a patient named Alex stuck his head in the door of my office, and I told him about the escaped killer. Alex said he’d have my back if necessary. He was a skinny guy, still reeling from being weaned off drugs, but he looked determined. I figured I could count on him.
He sat with me and started telling me about the robberies he had committed to get money for drugs. In the middle of the night he would break into a house and search the top kitchen drawer, where everyone kept their wallets. I asked what he did if the homeowners woke up. He told me they were so shocked to see a stranger in their house, they didn’t have time to react before he ran away.
At 5 AM we concluded that, since the killer hadn’t arrived yet, he probably wasn’t coming, and Alex went to bed. I thought how bizarre it was that I had spent my first night shift hoping a thief could protect me from a murderer. {read}
