The Moscow Sleepers

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Senior Nurse Sarah Burns was sitting at the nurses’ station checking the day’s records. She would be going off duty in half an hour, handing over to Emily, who was in charge of the night shift. The patients had all been washed and fed – those who were still capable of eating.

People came here to die. And die is what they all did. Nobody left here cured. Some took longer to die than others but they all died sooner or later. Nurse Sarah didn’t mind this. She liked the peace. There were no emergencies, no dramas. True, she had to deal with grieving relatives, but when it came, death was expected so the grief was muted.

Evening visiting didn’t start for another half hour and the families and friends who’d come would be Emily’s responsibility. Most came regularly, some twice a day. There was only one patient who had no visitors. Sarah Burns had been a nurse in the hospice for almost ten years and thought she’d seen it all, but Lars Petersen was unique in her experience. Each morning when Sarah arrived for the day shift she half expected to find the bed in Room 112 empty, linen stripped. But Petersen clung on stubbornly, though that wasn’t what puzzled her: she had seen countless patients die and in every conceivable way. But all of them had had somebody there in their last days – a relative or a friend. Someone.

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