EPHERMERALENCOUNTERS
WHICH

PERSIST

LONG AFTER THE MOMENT IS OVER

It is the morning shift, and she has already waited six hours to see a doctor. She rouses herself like a toddler, all puffy cheeks and listless eyes. Her dark skin is luminous in its softness. When she sits up and wipes the sleep from her eyes with the backs of her hands, she could be a portrait hanging in the National Gallery. But the light catches the bruises on her neck. The right side of her chest is distorted with the jutting bones of a fractured clavicle.

I imagine how they would have been just last week or the week before. Two wizened, tiny old people, walking slowly down the street holding hands. I leave her to her grief without interfering.

Outside the cubicle, I lean against the wall, hyperventilating on the inside. I chide myself for so many things: that I didn’t placate him better, that I didn’t have an exit plan, that I didn’t press the emergency buzzer, that I hadn’t read the room correctly.

“I think there will be multiple positive impacts [from these stories] , and the ripple effects from community understanding to people feeling ‘understood’ and unlocking a different perspective will be so powerful and put so much good out there'"

Dr Sarah Whitelaw