At 4:17 a.m., the lights in the Emergency Department lobby were painfully bright.
Shen Nanxing stood at the entrance to the resuscitation room, her right hand still pressing down on a wad of alcohol cotton. Her fingertips had been soaked pale by disinfectant. She had already been standing for more than six hours straight. Her heels were numb with pain, and her waist felt as if it were suspended by a fine thread; the moment she relaxed even slightly, her entire body could collapse onto the floor.
“Teacher Shen, the family of bed three is asking about the test results again.” The young nurse, Xiao Zhou, poked her head inside, clear tension in her voice.
Shen Nanxing glanced at the electronic clock on the wall, tossed her gloves into the medical waste bin, and said hoarsely, “I’ll go.”
The elderly patient in bed three had been brought in at two in the morning with chest tightness and shortness of breath. His family had become furious the moment they entered. The doctor was reviewing the electrocardiogram, and not all the test results were back yet, but his son had already slammed the table at the nurses’ Station twice.
When Shen Nanxing walked over, the man was looking down at his phone. The moment he saw her, he raised his voice. “Why aren’t the results ready yet? Is this the efficiency of your hospital? If something happens to my father because of the delay, who’s going to take responsibility?”
She had heard words like these far too many times. Each one was like a tiny stone—not fatal, but capable of bruising a person all over during the long night.
“Tests take time, and the doctor is already reviewing the items that have come back.” She tried to keep her tone steady. “The elderly patient’s vital signs are relatively stable at the moment. If anything changes, we’ll deal with it immediately.”
“You say he’s stable, so he’s stable? Are you a doctor?”
Shen Nanxing paused for half a second, then still answered, “I’m the nurse responsible for his care. I’m responsible for monitoring his condition and promptly reporting any changes to the doctor.”
The man was about to say something else when the monitor in the resuscitation room suddenly began sounding a rapid alarm. Shen Nanxing turned and ran, her mind entering emergency mode even faster than her body. Administering oxygen, establishing access, bringing over the cart, checking the medications, assisting the doctor with the resuscitation—every movement was etched into her bones.
By the time that chaos finally passed, the horizon had already begun to turn faintly gray.
During shift handover, the head nurse briefly mentioned a few precautions. Shen Nanxing lowered her head and added to her notes, her wrist so sore that she could barely hold the pen. Xiao Zhou leaned over and whispered, “Teacher Shen, you look awful. Do you want to eat something before you go off duty?”
Shen Nanxing smiled. “I’ll worry about it after I get home. The children still have school today.”
She took off her nurse’s Uniform and changed back into her old jacket. The mirror in the changing room reflected the face of a thirty-seven years old woman, faint dark circles beneath her eyes, the ends of her hair tied up carelessly, and a shallow mark pressed into the corner of her forehead by her mask. Looking at her reflection, she suddenly felt like a stranger.
When she had first entered the hospital twelve years ago, her skin had been bright, and she had walked with a lively stride. Back then, she had thought the work id badge of a top-tier hospital was a ticket to a stable life. As long as she was willing to work hard, life would keep getting better.
Now she only wanted to close her eyes for ten extra seconds in the elevator.
At half past six in the morning, Shen Nanxing pushed open the door to her home. The kitchen was cold and empty, and the bowls washed the night before were still turned upside down on the dish rack. Without even having time to change her shoes, she put rice into the rice cooker, then took eggs, milk, and yesterday’s leftover vegetables from the refrigerator.
The door to her elder son Gu Yiming’s room was half open, with worksheets piled on the desk. Her younger son, Gu Yichen, was sleeping soundly while hugging his quilt, one leg sticking out.
She gently tucked Xiaobao’s leg back under the covers, then turned to wake Dabao.
“Yiming, time to get up. You have morning reading today.”
The boy on the bed turned over and mumbled, “Five more minutes.”
Shen Nanxing wanted to say no, but seeing the faint exhaustion beneath her son’s eyes, the words softened when they reached her lips. “Then five minutes. Mom will go cook some noodles.”
As the water in the pot began to steam, she stood by the stove and suddenly felt as if the alarm from the resuscitation room were still ringing beside her ears. She braced herself against the counter and closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, the sky outside the window was already completely bright.
The city had awakened.
And it seemed she had never truly slept.