The Night Shift
"Nurse Zara pulls endless night shifts at the NHS hospital. She doesn't expect her regular difficult patient—handsome but cantankerous Rashid—to become her reason for coming to work."
The Night Shift
"You're late."
Zara counted to ten before responding. Rashid Ahmed—Room 317—was her most difficult patient. Recovering from a construction accident, he had nothing to do but criticize her timing.
"I'm exactly on time. You're just impatient."
"I'm in pain."
"I'll get your medication." She reached for his chart. "Anything else?"
"Stay." The word surprised them both. "I mean—talk to me. Nights are long."
She should refuse. Instead, she sat.
The night talks became routine.
She learned he'd been a foreman, had supported his mother and sisters, had been planning to propose to a woman who left when the accident happened.
"She said I was too broken," he said one night. "Damaged goods."
"She's wrong." Zara checked his IV. "Healing takes time. It doesn't make you less."
"Easy to say."
"Easy to prove." She met his eyes. "I've been a nurse for ten years. I know what broken looks like. You're not it."
Something shifted in his expression. "You're different, Zara."
"I'm just doing my job."
"This isn't job." He caught her hand. "This is you. Caring. Making me feel human again."
He was discharged on a Monday. She didn't expect to miss him.
Two weeks later, he appeared in the hospital lobby with flowers.
"I'm not allowed to date patients," she said.
"I'm not a patient anymore." He offered the bouquet. "I'm a man who hasn't stopped thinking about the nurse who saw him as more than his injuries."
"Rashid..."
"One date. Let me show you who I am outside these walls."
The date led to more dates. More dates led to his flat, to his bed, to his hands gentle despite their strength.
"I can't believe you want me," Rashid said, tracing her face. "I'm still healing."
"We're all healing." She pulled him closer. "That's what life is."
He made love to her carefully, mindful of his still-mending body, devoted to her pleasure despite his limitations.
"Meri jaan," he breathed. "You saved me. Not the doctors—you."
"I just talked to you."
"You saw me." He kissed her deeply. "That's everything."
"Your colleagues will talk," Rashid said afterward. "The nurse and her former patient."
"Let them." She nestled against him. "I know what we are."
"What are we?"
"Two people who found each other in the dark." She smiled. "Night shift magic."
"Is that a medical term?"
"It is now."
They married quietly—just family and her nursing friends.
He fully recovered, eventually. She kept working nights.
Some of the best love stories, she learned, happened when everyone else was sleeping.