Station Announcement:
"Attention passengers: The 09:30 flight to Tomorrow has been cleared for departure. Please ensure all hopes are securely packed and all doubts declared."
Sara Ibrahim had not imagined that an airport could feel like a hospital.The fluorescent glare, the smell of antiseptic floors, the polite panic of people moving in narrow lines — it all reminded her of the ward she was leaving behind.Only this ward had wings.
She adjusted the strap of her handbag and checked her passport for the seventh time. Her fingers left damp crescent marks on the plastic cover.The name inside — Sara P. Ibrahim, Age 26, Nurse — looked like a stranger's.
Through the glass wall, dawn trembled over the runway. Aircraft lights blinked in steady patience, their bellies reflecting the first coral blush of sunrise. Somewhere beyond that line of light lay Muscat — a city she'd memorised from recruitment pamphlets but could not picture in motion.
Her younger brother had texted an hour ago:
Amma didn't sleep. Call after boarding. Don't cry. You're doing good, chechi.
She had not replied. There was no word that could hold both ache and duty.
At the boarding gate, a woman in a gold-stitched salwar fanned herself with her passport. "First time?" she asked.Sara nodded."Don't worry, sister. The first month you'll want to come home every day. After that, you'll forget home exists."The woman smiled — not kindly, but knowingly.
When the engines began to roar, Sara pressed her forehead against the cool oval of the window. Kerala shrank beneath her — rivers twisting like veins, coconut palms flattening into threads, the sea swallowing the edge of land.
She whispered the Fatiha under her breath.
Muscat arrived like a silence that had forgotten sound.The desert air was so dry it seemed to erase the memory of rain from her skin. Everything gleamed — glass, marble, language. Even her own reflection in the arrival hall looked edited.
A man from the hospital met her group and herded them into a white minibus. His badge read Coordinator – Human Resources. His smile was efficient.
As they drove through the city, Sara saw cranes lifting new buildings into the pale sky, men in blue uniforms moving like dots below. The sun hung low but sharp; it looked closer here, impatient.
When the bus turned toward the sea, she caught sight of waves folding gently, without foam. A calm ocean disturbed her more than a storm.
The Al Noor Medical Complex stood white and wide, its glass doors sliding open with a sigh.Inside, the air smelled of metal and lavender disinfectant. Nurses in navy uniforms hurried through corridors that hummed with machines.
Sara received a badge, a room key, and a schedule before she could blink. Orientation would begin in two hours.
Her roommate, a Filipina nurse named Maria, greeted her with the exhaustion of experience."Welcome. First time Gulf?""Yes.""Keep your heart light and your bag ready," Maria said. "Both should be easy to carry."
She pointed to the window. Beyond it stretched rows of low beige apartments and a horizon that refused to end.
That evening, Sara stood in the staff cafeteria staring at a plate of rice and lamb. The meat gleamed with oil, its smell unfamiliar. Around her, languages braided — Arabic, Tagalog, Hindi, English. Every conversation seemed to carry the same undertone: endurance.
When her shift began, she followed the head nurse through a maze of wards. Patients slept beneath white sheets that rose and fell like waves. Monitors blinked in green pulse rhythms.
Her first patient was an elderly Omani man with pneumonia. His beard trembled as he breathed."Good evening, Baba," she said softly.He did not answer. His eyes were closed, but his hand, thin and translucent, reached out. She took it.
The gesture steadied her. Touch was language enough.
Hours passed. The clock above the nurses' station refused to move quickly.At 2 a.m., a code blue echoed through the hallway — her first night, her first emergency.
By the time the team arrived, the man's chest had gone still.Sara performed compressions until her arms numbed. When the doctor called the time, she stood silent, sweat sliding down her back despite the air-conditioning.
Maria placed a hand on her shoulder. "You did right.""Did I?""Yes. Sometimes right just means present."
Later, in the dormitory, Sara showered until the water ran cold. The tiles smelled of detergent and someone else's perfume. She sat on her bed and opened her diary. The page blurred under her dripping hair.
Dear Amma,I think I learned the first rule today. We save who we can, and we pray for the rest.Don't worry if I don't call often. Sometimes silence is also a form of prayer.
She folded the paper, slid it under her pillow. The hum of the air conditioner filled the room like a heartbeat that wasn't hers.
Days folded into weeks. Sara learned to read monitors faster than faces. She stopped flinching at the sight of death, but she still said a prayer after every loss — quiet, private, unrecorded.
She began spending her free hours on the hospital terrace, where she could see the sea as a thin blue thread. She would imagine rain falling into it, far away, in another country.
One evening, while standing there, she saw a boy by the staff gate selling tea. His tray was dented, his shirt too large, but he smiled as he poured. She bought a cup, mostly for the sound — the small clink of glass, the human rhythm in a mechanical day.
"You from India?" he asked."Yes. Kerala.""Rain place," he said brightly. "My uncle there. Always rain.""Yes," she said, smiling. "Always."
She drank the tea slowly, though it was too sweet, because the sweetness tasted like memory.
Months passed. Paydays came and went. Her roommates changed, her shifts stretched longer, her voice took on the calm monotone of routine. She began sending money home, small amounts that made her family's life larger.
Yet sometimes, in the half-sleep before dawn, she would dream of the station — the faces she had seen that night, strangers lit by lightning. A teacher holding a book. A girl with a phone. A man sketching puddles.
She would wake with the certainty that they, too, were awake somewhere, weathering their own storms.
One night, during her break, she received a message from her brother:
Amma's blood pressure low. Doctor says rest. We're okay. Don't panic.
Her hands trembled. She called immediately. The line crackled.Amma's voice came faint, sleepy."I'm fine, mole. Don't worry.""You're not taking your tablets.""I am. The rain hasn't stopped here. Maybe that's why I'm slow.""Sleep, Amma. I'll come home soon."
When the call ended, Sara stood for a long time beside the vending machine. She thought of how distance multiplied helplessness. Then she wrote herself a promise on a tissue:
One day I'll bring care home.
She tucked it into her wallet next to her ID card.
That night, while changing a patient's IV, she saw her reflection in the window — pale, eyes shadowed, but steady.The hospital lights shimmered behind her like a city underwater.
Sara smiled at her reflection, the way one does at a friend one hasn't spoken to in years.The next morning, she emailed the licensing board in Kerala, asking about hospice regulations.
It was a small click — send — but it sounded, in her heart, like arrival.