My Soulmate Is on the Night Shift

How it begins

Amira assumed the ferryman worked for the hospital.

He wore comfortable shoes.

That was usually enough.

He appeared beside the ambulance bay at four in the morning carrying two coffees and no visible sense of urgency.

"Portering?" she asked.

"Something like that."

"Then can you help with this trolley?"

He set down the coffee and helped.

For three weeks, he was useful in the ordinary ways people noticed only when nobody did them. He found blankets. He held doors. He knew which corridor stayed quiet when a family needed to cry.

Amira liked him before she knew his name.

Rowan.

He said it as though he had not needed to introduce himself in a long time.

On Thursday, she found him at an emergency before dispatch had called it in.

A man lay beside the river steps.

Rowan stood several feet away, holding a small silver coin.

Amira knelt.

Breathing.

Pulse.

Cold, frightened, alive.

"Call it through," she told Rowan.

"I have."

The man opened his eyes.

He saw Rowan and began to shake.

"Not yet."

Rowan closed his hand around the coin.

"No," he said gently. "Not yet."

After the ambulance left, Amira stayed by the steps.

The river reflected a pale line of morning.

"What do you do?"

Rowan looked at the empty water.

"Take people across."

"Which people?"

"The ones who need to go."

She waited for a joke.

He did not supply one.

In her pocket, her phone sounded with another call.

Rowan handed her the coffee he had somehow kept warm.

"Get home safely."

Amira looked at the cup.

Then at him.

For the first time, the kindness seemed less ordinary than its cost.

"Do you ever get a day off?"

He smiled.

It was the saddest answer she had heard all week.

Amira stayed beside him until the ambulance lights disappeared.