The charger

At a quarter to three in the morning, the emergency department waiting room held nine people, a television showing a cookery programme with the sound off, and one working socket.

The socket was behind Dev’s chair. He had found it at midnight and plugged in his phone, and since then he had been answering messages from his sister about their mother, who was somewhere beyond the double doors having tests. The messages said things like any news and not yet and they said maybe another hour.

Across from him, a woman in a dressing gown under a raincoat was holding a phone with a black screen. She kept pressing the side button as though it might reconsider.

Dev looked at his battery: sixty-four percent. He looked at her black screen. He unplugged his phone, held out the cable and said, “Do you want —” and she said, “Oh, God, yes,” before he had finished.

The cable did not reach her chair. So she came and sat next to him, which neither of them had planned, and they sat side by side facing the silent chef, her phone charging on the floor between their feet.

When it came back to life it buzzed eleven times in a row. She read the messages and put her hand over her mouth, and Dev looked very hard at the television, where someone was folding egg whites.

“It’s all right,” she said after a while. “It’s all right. He’s asking for me. They sent me out while they — I needed to tell my daughter.” She typed with one thumb, fast.

At twenty past three a nurse came through the doors and called a name that was not either of theirs. At twenty to four she called Dev’s mother’s name, and he stood up too quickly and the cable came out of the wall.

He looked down at it. The woman was already unplugging her phone and winding the cable around her fingers to give it back.

“Keep it,” he said. “Leave it there. Someone will need it.”

When he came back through the doors at dawn, carrying his mother’s handbag and some good news he did not yet quite believe, the woman was gone. The cable was still plugged in behind his old chair, coiled neatly on the seat. A man with a bandaged hand was eyeing it.

Dev nodded at him. The man nodded back, sat down, and plugged in his phone.