The Bridging Survey

At four in the morning, Aspen Gardens Care Home was so quiet that Lina could hear the fridge in the staff room humming to itself.

She had done her round. Mr. Hughes in room 112 was asleep, snoring gently, with his sensor mat on the floor next to the bed; it had been there since last September, and he had not fallen once. Mrs. Okafor in 118 was awake, as always, listening to the radio with one earphone, and had told Lina for the hundredth time that she had been a midwife once, in another life, and had delivered four hundred babies.

"Four hundred and three," Lina had corrected her. "You told me last week."

"Then four hundred and three," Mrs. Okafor had said happily. "You remember everything. You should be a nurse."

"I was a nurse," Lina had said.

"Then be one again," Mrs. Okafor had said, and turned up her radio.

Now, at four, Lina sat in the staff room with a cup of tea and her phone. On the screen was an email she had received on Monday and had not opened until now, because she had been afraid of it.