The nurse leaves work at 6.00 with yet another death behind her. Seven mortalities in twelve months. Night shift is a blessing. Night shift is her time to make important decisions.

She drives to the nearby coast. Parks up. Takes a small packet from her coat pocket. Popping a white pill into her mouth, her energy soars; her brain sings with vibrant music. Barefoot, she gets out of her car and dances upon sand, castings away dark colours that, daily, haunt her.

At 8.00 am she returns home, meeting her mother’s night carer in the hallway. ‘Everything all right,’ she asks, her recent euphoria ebbing into shades of dull pewter.

The carer shakes her head. ‘I tried to ring you. Your mother’s had a stroke. She’s been taken to St. Margaret’ Hospital.’

She dashes back outside. Gets into her car. Drives to the place she’d left two hours ago. Parking, she runs through A&E, down a long corridor and up a flight of stairs. On reaching Geriatrics, she finds her mother lying comatose in the same bed her last patient occupied.

She takes hold of a cold hand, squeezes gently, but it feels like the dead mackerel she’d found on the beach, yesterday. A colleague comes to stand beside her. ‘Do what you can for my mother,’ she tells her.

‘You shouldn’t work, tonight,’ her colleague replies. ‘Considering the circumstances.’

She smiles a weary smile. ‘Mother always insists upon duty before sentimentality.’

This evening, when she arrives to work her shift, she goes straight to her mother’s bed only to find it empty. She hears a colleague say, ‘We tried to ring you. Your mother died at half past five. She never regained consciousness.’

She looks down at the bare mattress. Now her black shoed feet begin to tap in the hope of dispelling her mental penumbra, but, as fast as she feet tap, dark shadows lengthen to grow into black, overwhelming pulsations.

‘Go home.’ A hand touches her shoulder, scattering dark shadows into shades of grey.

She turns and looks into brown, concerned eyes. ‘No,’ she replies. ‘Mother said.’ She stops, unable to say those words and heads towards the nurse’s station.