Hayat Clinic

Down in Purna Nagar, you’ll find our Hayat Clinic. It’s a pretty quiet residential neighborhood for the most part, which makes for a calm place to work. We don’t have the crazy traffic like you see in the center of town. The building is just a standard street-side place with a small porch where people sometimes stand to get out of the rain. Inside, the walls are a bit plain, maybe a bit yellowed from the years. We have a big desk where we keep all the ledgers and a telephone that rings a bit too loudly for such a small space. Most of the people who come in are our neighbors from around Purna Nagar. We know their names and which kids belong to which families. It’s a comfortable routine we have here. We arrive, sweep the front step, turn on the lights, and wait for the first knock on the door. There’s a small window in the back that looks out onto a little patch of grass, and sometimes we sit there for ten minutes with a cup of tea when things are slow. We don’t have any fancy computerized systems; everything is written down in big books. It’s a bit old-fashioned, but it works for us. The ceiling fan hums a bit when it’s on the highest setting, but we’ve grown used to it. It’s just our little clinic in the corner of the neighborhood.