The night I didn’t sleep

The hospital at 3 a.m. is a different country. The lights hum, the corridor is empty enough that you hear your own thoughts, and the names on the charts stop being names — they become people you don’t want to fail.

I learned more in those hours than in any lecture. Not facts; texture. How a fever feels when you’ve been awake for twenty hours and the nurse hasn’t slept either. How the weight of a clipboard can change. How to say something kind to a family who is too tired to listen — and mean it.

There’s a moment near five in the morning when the sky starts to forget it was dark. You start to forget you were tired. You realise you didn’t sleep, and you’d do it again. That’s when I knew I had picked the right room to be in.