The Locum Doctor
"She's a GP who covers shifts at practices across East London. He's the nurse at the Hackney clinic—Somali, competent, and too handsome for the fluorescent lights. When they're locked in after a late shift, professionalism is the last thing on either mind."
Locum work means never getting attached.
Different clinic every week. Different patients. Different staff. I breeze in, cover shifts, breeze out before anyone learns my middle name.
But Hackney Health Centre keeps calling me back.
And I keep saying yes.
Nadif is the reason.
Senior practice nurse. Thirty years old. The kind of competent that makes my job easier—patients prepped, notes ready, everything I need before I know I need it.
"Dr. Fadumo." He hands me a file. "Room three is ready. Chronic diabetic, needs a medication review."
"Thank you, Nadif."
He smiles. I forget what I was doing.
This has been happening for three months.
The late shift is supposed to end at 8 PM.
It doesn't. A complex case runs over. Then another. By the time I see my last patient, it's 9:30, the reception staff have gone home, and the building security has locked the front doors.
"We're stuck," Nadif says, checking his phone. "Security doesn't come back until morning."
"There must be an emergency exit—"
"Alarmed. We'd set off every sensor in the building."
We look at each other. The clinic is silent around us. Eight hours until anyone comes to let us out.
"I'll make tea," he says.
We sit in the staff room.
Terrible tea. Vending machine biscuits. The kind of forced intimacy that working overnight creates.
"How long have you been a nurse?" I ask.
"Eight years. Trained in Mogadishu, retrained here." He stretches. "You?"
"Medicine for ten. Locum for three."
"Why locum?"
"Commitment issues." I say it as a joke. It comes out as truth.
He studies me. "You don't seem like someone with commitment issues."
"What do I seem like?"
"Someone who's been hurt." He sets down his cup. "Someone who moves around so she doesn't have to stay anywhere long enough to be hurt again."
I should deflect.
Change the subject. Make another joke. Maintain the professional distance I've cultivated across a hundred clinics.
"My fiancé left me," I hear myself say. "Four years ago. Two weeks before the wedding."
"I'm sorry."
"I'm not. Not anymore." I look at my hands. "But I learned not to stay. Staying means investing. Investing means losing."
"Does it have to?"
"In my experience."
"Maybe you need new experiences."
He's looking at me differently now. Not like a colleague. Like something else.
"Nadif—"
"We're locked in a building until 6 AM." He moves closer. "I've watched you for three months. The way you treat patients. The way you actually listen when they talk. The way you smile when you think no one's looking."
"I don't—"
"You do. At me." He stops inches away. "I see you, Fadumo. Even when you're trying to be invisible."
I kiss him.
Not professionally. Not appropriately. A full, desperate kiss that says everything I've been pretending I didn't feel.
"Finally—" he breathes against my mouth.
"This is insane—"
"We have eight hours—" He pulls me closer. "Let's be insane together."
The examination room has a proper bed.
We stumble into it, pulling at each other's scrubs, hands everywhere. The fluorescent lights are too bright but neither of us cares enough to find the switch.
"You're beautiful—" he says, unhooking my bra.
"I'm exhausted and I smell like antiseptic—"
"Beautiful." He kisses down my chest. "I've thought about this every shift we've worked together."
"Me too—"
"Really?"
"Why do you think I keep coming back to this clinic?"
He grins. Then his mouth finds my breast, and I stop being able to form sentences.
He takes his time.
Traces every part of me with clinical attention—ironic, given the location. By the time his mouth reaches between my thighs, I'm gripping the examination bed's paper cover, tearing it to shreds.
"Nadif—"
"I've got you."
His tongue is skilled, precise, thorough. I come with the fluorescent lights buzzing above me, in a room where I've diagnosed a hundred patients, with a man who's made me feel more in five minutes than anyone has in years.
"Please—I need—"
He rises over me.
He fills me on an NHS examination bed.
The absurdity of it—doctors' office, after hours, locked in—makes everything more intense. Or maybe that's just him.
"You feel—" I gasp.
"Tell me—"
"Perfect. You feel perfect."
He moves.
Slow first, then faster as I demand it. The bed rolls slightly on its wheels, hitting the wall, but neither of us stops.
"Yes—yes—Nadif—"
"I'm close—"
"With me—"
We come together.
Collapse on the narrow bed, breathing hard, the absurdity finally hitting us.
I start to laugh.
He laughs too.
"We just—" I gesture around. "In an examination room—"
"On NHS property." He grins. "They don't cover this in training."
We spend the night together.
Not just sex—though there's more of that. Talking. Learning. Finding out that commitment issues can dissolve when you find the right person.
"Come back to Hackney," he says at 5 AM, tangled on the staff room couch.
"I always come back to Hackney."
"No. Come back permanently." He pulls me closer. "We need a good locum. I need someone who makes me want to come to work."
"That's very unprofessional."
"I think we're past professional." He kisses my forehead. "What do you say?"
I take the permanent position.
Not just for him—though he's a significant factor. For me. For the version of myself that's tired of running.
"You're different," a patient tells me after a month.
"How so?"
"Happier." She smiles. "It suits you."
It does.
It suits both of us—the doctor who stopped moving and the nurse who made her want to stay.
Sometimes the best prescriptions aren't written down.
Sometimes they just walk into your clinic and refuse to let you keep running.