I cleaned room 14 every night for nine years and I cleaned it always in the same order, first the floor by the door, then the floor around the bed, then the bathroom, then the windowsill, and the order mattered because the order was the thing that kept me awake, that kept me going from one room to the next without thinking, and when I wasn’t thinking I worked better and when I worked better the time passed and when the time passed dawn came and I could go home. The shoes were blue, electric blue with white rubber soles, and my daughter had given them to me three years ago saying « in hospital you need cheerful shoes » and I had put them on and never taken them off, I washed them every Sunday in the tub with Marseille soap and set them to dry on the balcony and by Monday they were ready. In the breast pocket of my scrubs I kept a lipstick, a brick-colored lipstick I never wore at work but checked was there every time I changed, I touched it with my fingers through the fabric and if I felt it everything was fine and if I didn’t feel it a stupid agitation seized me, out of all proportion, as if the lipstick were something serious and not a lipstick. (It was something serious. I don’t know why, but it was.) The cart was in the corridor, with the products lined up the way I lined them up, detergent on the left, cloths in the middle, black bag on the right, and the wheels made a sound I knew, a sound that was my sound, and I could hear it from far away when a colleague moved the cart by mistake and I knew it wasn’t me pushing it because the wheels sounded different.

The shift began at ten and ended at six and between ten and six the world was a corridor with fluorescent lights and numbered doors and the silence of patients who slept and the noise of machines that never slept. The head nurse that night was Ferretti, a lean woman with short grey hair who spoke little and when she spoke said precise things. « Marta, room 14 has a new patient, watch the catheter » she told me in passing, and I nodded and pushed the cart and the wheels made their sound and I went. My son sent me a voice message every evening at eleven, every evening, and I listened to it in the corridor between 14 and 15 with the phone close to my ear and the volume low, and he said ordinary things, « mum the dog ate a shoe » and « mum goodnight », and his voice split the night in two, and after the message the work was lighter. That night in the break room the television was on and nobody was watching it, and I went in to get water and saw the images, a bombed hospital in a place I couldn’t name, and the newsreader was saying seven healthcare workers killed and the corridors were the same, the same fluorescent lights and the same numbered doors and the same floor, and I stood there with the glass in my hand and watched for a minute and then I left, and the water in the glass was shaking because my hand was shaking, and I was ashamed of the hand that shook because it hadn’t happened to me, but the doors were the same and the lights were the same and the floor was the same.

I went into room 14. The patient was asleep, breathing steady, the sheet up to his chest, the catheter on the right side of the bed. I pushed the cart in and the wheels made the sound and the patient did not wake. I started with the floor by the door, as always, the damp cloth on the linoleum, long strokes from right to left. Then the floor around the bed. Then the bathroom. In the bathroom there was a chair, a pale blue plastic chair that shouldn’t have been there, that someone had moved from the corridor, and the chair was between the sink and the wall and it blocked the corner. I could move the chair. But moving the chair would make noise and the noise would wake the patient and the woken patient would complain and the complaint would reach Ferretti and Ferretti would note it down. Or I could leave the chair and clean around it and the corner would stay dirty and no one would see. I left the chair. I cleaned around it. The corner stayed dirty. I finished the bathroom, came back into the room, and before leaving I stopped at the window. I had never stopped at the window in room 14. Nine years and I had never looked out of that window. (I had never stopped at that window. Nine years and I had never looked out.) There was the car park, and the parked cars, and a streetlamp on, and behind the streetlamp the wall of the cardiology ward, and behind the wall the sky that was black and starless. There was nothing to see. But I stayed. I stayed ten seconds, maybe fifteen, with the cloth in my hand and the blue shoes on the linoleum and the cart behind me with the products lined up, and I looked out and out there was nothing and I looked all the same.

I finished the shift at six and four minutes. I put the cart back in the storeroom, the products lined up, a new black bag. I changed in the locker room, took off the blue shoes and put them in the locker, checked the lipstick in the breast pocket before hanging up the scrubs, it was there, I felt it with my fingers. I went out the back, crossed the car park, got in the car. The car was cold and the seats were damp and the windscreen had condensation. I took out my phone and listened to my son’s message, the eleven o’clock one I hadn’t yet listened to because at eleven I was in the corridor between 14 and 15 and the television in the break room was showing the bombed hospital and I hadn’t listened. « Mum, today the dog stole a sock and carried it under the bed and I can’t get it out. Goodnight. » I said goodnight to the phone after the message had ended. I said it out loud, in the cold car, with the fogged windscreen and the hospital behind me with its lights on. Room 14 was clean. The bathroom corner wasn’t, the bathroom corner was dirty, and tomorrow night I would clean it. The cart was in the storeroom. The blue shoes were in the locker. The lipstick was in the breast pocket. My son was asleep. The dog was asleep with the sock under the bed. I started the engine and turned on the headlights and the car park turned yellow and I drove off, and the hospital in the rear-view mirror had its lights on, all the lights on, and room 14 was one of those lights.