Six Years in a Locker

On Monday a sheet of paper appeared, taped to the door of the nurses' locker room: "Staff are hereby informed that the locker rooms will be renovated starting October 20. Please empty your lockers. Anything left behind will be discarded." Underneath, someone had written in blue pen: "finally?" And underneath that, in different handwriting: "don't get excited, it's just paint."

My locker is number 23. It's beige sheet metal, it has a dent at knee height that was already there when I arrived, and a combination lock my fingers know but my head doesn't; ask me the numbers and I couldn't tell you, but put me in front of the lock and I'll open it with my eyes closed. I've used it for six years. I had never emptied it. Opening something every night is one thing. Seeing what's at the very back is another.

Archaeology at three in the morning

I did it last night, in the dead stretch that sometimes falls between three and four, with a grocery bag in one hand and my phone flashlight in the other, because the locker room bulb has been flickering for as long as I can remember.

First layer, the everyday stuff: a spare set of scrubs, old clogs for rainy days, deodorant, the box of foam earplugs number I-don't-know-what, a toothbrush in its case and a hair tie for my bun tangled with another hair tie for my bun, which was in turn tangled with three more. I threw the whole knot away.

Second layer, the stuff I'd forgotten existed: a granola bar with a March 2023 expiration date, which I didn't dare open. An umbrella of the kind that flips inside out at the first gust. Four pens that don't write and one that does, which I slipped into my pocket like I'd found money. A brown cardigan that isn't mine and that nobody has claimed in two years. A jar of coconut hand cream Lucía gave me when she moved to Monterrey, which I never used because it felt like a shame to use it up. It had separated into two liquids of different colors. That one made me laugh out loud, alone, in a locker room, at three in the morning, like a crazy person.

The inside of the door

The door was last. The inside was covered in things taped on top of each other, like those market stall walls where nobody takes the old flyers down, they just cover them up. I peeled them off from the outside in.

On top was the race bib from last Sunday, which Pao stuck there on Monday without asking me. Under it, the January shift schedule, with my name underlined on the weekend nights. Under that, a photo of the three of us sisters at a wedding in 2021, Andrea with her hair flat-ironed and me with my eyes shut, which is how I come out in eighty percent of photos. Under that, a little Virgin Mary card a woman gave me in my first year, which I never had the heart to take down, because you don't take down someone's Virgin Mary card.

And at the very back, taped straight onto the metal, the tape gone yellow and stiff, a note on a prescription pad sheet. The handwriting was Doña Chela's, the nurse I was paired with when I started nights, who retired four years ago. It said: "Audrey: drink your water even when you're not thirsty. Sit down when you can even if you're not tired. And don't take anyone home with you. Ch."

I didn't remember that note. I remembered Doña Chela, of course: her button-up cardigan, how she called everyone "mija," doctors included, and the Tupperware of jícama with chili she always brought and passed around at five in the morning. But not the note. I must have stuck it there my first week, and then kept piling things on top, and the note went on working by itself, underneath, for six years.

What you take with you

It took me a long time to understand the "don't take anyone home with you" part. She didn't mean the patients themselves, she meant their stories. Not getting into the car at seven-thirty with the whole night still on top of you. I've kept to it, more or less. Some nights I do take home, like the one with the woman in bed six, and I don't regret it. But I got the idea: a locker is for leaving things, not just for keeping them.

At four a call bell rang and I had to shut everything half-done. In the morning I finished emptying it, already changed out of my scrubs, with the grocery bag full. I left the lock open, hanging from the latch, the way the sheet said to leave it.

At home I spread everything out on the kitchen table. I threw out the granola bar. I threw out the coconut cream, at last. I put the wedding photo in a drawer. The Virgin Mary card went on the bathroom mirror. And Doña Chela's note went on the fridge door, under the medal, held by the same pizzeria magnet, because it's the only one strong enough.

Now when I open the fridge they both make a sound: the medal goes "clink" and the note makes a small old-paper rustle. Today I woke up at four in the afternoon, opened the fridge and drank a glass of water even though I wasn't thirsty.