City Hospital

People just call us City Hospital because that is what is on the big sign out front. We sit right here in the middle of things, and the doors are basically never locked. It is a bit of an old building, with white tiles that have some cracks if you look close enough. The morning shift usually starts with a lot of noise as the night staff tells us what happened while we were sleeping. We have a small canteen that makes okay coffee, but most of us bring a thermos from home because it tastes better. The chairs in the lobby are blue and a little hard, but they stay full most days. You get to know the regulars after a while, like the old man who comes in just to check his blood pressure and talk about the weather. It is not a quiet place, especially when the ambulance comes in or when someone’s family is all talking at once in the hallway. We have a couple of plants in the corner that struggle a bit because they don’t get much sun, but we keep watering them anyway. The staff here has been together for years, so we’re more like a family than anything else. Sometimes we argue about whose turn it is to clean the break room, but the work always gets done. We just take it one day at a time, looking after whoever walks through the door and needs a bit of help.