At 4am...

At 4am I am a closet philosopher. At 4am I am going to change the world. At 4am I have given up the last shred of hope that more sleep will come. At 4am I have already been awake for over an hour. At 4am I have two hours until my alarm will go off, unnecessarily. At 4am I say goodbye to the final vestiges of slumber and hello to all of the worries and anxieties that I've swept under the carpet in daylight hours. At 4am I am tired and hungry because I didn't get a break on my shift yesterday. At 4am I am considering my clinic day that is just around the corner. At 4am I am wondering whether there is an outfit/make-up combination that will belie my three hours' sleep, and whether that combination is within my grasp. Doubtful. At 6am I shall feel relieved that I can legitimately start my day. At 8am the first woman will stroll into clinic and I will welcome her with open arms. At 1pm I may not get a lunch break, meaning at 3pm I will be hungry and tired, again. At gone 5pm the last woman will leave my clinic, and I will have another three hours in which to do my admin, although in reality it will take at least double that and will stretch across my entire week. At some point I will cry through sheer exhaustion on the drive home. I may get to hear about the kids' days, but I will definitely kiss them goodnight and I will draw them a picture and leave them a note that they will find when they wake up. I might get a well-earned kiss and a hug from them, and I will wish that I'd seen them for longer today than I will have seen each of the women in my clinic. At bedtime I will probably realise that I haven't drunk enough water or taken enough care to dull the weight of the headache that's bearing down on me. I won't have made a dent in the admin that I have to do, but I will have listened and smiled and given good care, I hope. I will have made sure the kids are fed, but I won't have cooked dinner for myself. At 3am tomorrow morning I will hopefully be sound asleep, rather than waking up to another dream in which I'm on a plane that's descending rapidly into a fire pit of a volcano. At 4am today I am trying not to read too much into what that dream may signify.

At 4am I am wondering whether all of my shifts will leave me feeling like yesterday's did: powerless, unheard, unimportant, a failure. At 4am I am reading a tweet by Sheena Byrom that I'd saved, urging us to anaesthetise people with kindness. At 4am I am reminded by Hannah Dahlen that I must stand for what is right, even if that means standing alone. At 4am that has never seemed so pertinent.

At 5am I have found the one I needed, “She remembered who she was and the game changed”.