Letters from the Hospital Roof

Letters from the Hospital Roof

By Abdul Muhammad

The hospital roof became my secret sanctuary. It wasn’t supposed to — it was just a square of concrete with a rusty railing and a blinking red light that kept planes away. But every night after my shift ended, I climbed the narrow metal stairs, pushed open the heavy door, and stepped into the quiet.

The city stretched beneath me, glowing like a patient’s monitor. The smell of disinfectant was replaced by cool night air, and for a few minutes, I could breathe again.

That’s where I started writing the letters.

At first, I didn’t know who I was writing to. My hand moved faster than my mind, spilling words onto the cheap notepad I kept in my coat pocket. The first one started simply:

> Dear Mrs. Hanley,
I’m sorry we couldn’t save you.



I wrote about how her son stood by her bed whispering prayers until dawn, about how I held her hand even though my gloves were damp with sweat, about how she was the first patient I lost during my internship. When I finished, I tore the page out, folded it once, and let it sit on my lap. The wind didn’t take it. I didn’t throw it away.

I just wrote another one.


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Some nights, I wrote to my younger self.

> Dear Me at Seventeen,
You think you’re strong because you got into medical school. But strength isn’t about grades. Strength is telling a family that their father didn’t make it through the night, even when your voice shakes.



I wrote about the coffee that never tasted strong enough, the laughter that broke out in the residents’ lounge at three a.m., the way we all pretended we were fine.

> Dear Me at Seventeen,
You’ll cry in the supply closet. More than once. That doesn’t mean you’re weak. It means you’re still human.




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There were nights when I didn’t write at all. I just sat there with my legs dangling over the edge, my pager silent for once, listening to the sounds of the city. Those nights felt like a stolen miracle.

But then there were the nights after bad shifts.

The worst was a little boy named Omar. Seven years old, pneumonia. We tried everything — oxygen, antibiotics, prayers whispered under our breath like medicine. His mother clutched his small hands and begged me to tell her he’d get better.

When the monitors went flat, I felt something inside me go flat too.

That night on the roof, my hands shook so hard I almost dropped the pen.

> Dear Omar,
I wanted to tell you that you were the bravest kid I ever met. That the way you smiled at me when I put the IV in made me believe, just for a second, that maybe I was good at this job.



I wrote until the words blurred with tears.


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Weeks passed. The letters piled up in my locker, folded and creased, some smeared with coffee rings, some with tear stains. No one ever saw them.

One morning, after a 36-hour shift, I left the hospital and found the city waking up — shopkeepers sweeping sidewalks, buses rumbling by. And I realized that I felt… lighter.

It wasn’t because the grief had gone away. It hadn’t. But the letters had taken some of the weight.

That night, instead of writing to the dead, I wrote to the living.

> Dear Future Me,
One day, you’ll be the doctor who teaches the new interns. Please tell them it’s okay to grieve. Tell them to go to the roof and breathe. Tell them to write letters, even if they never send them.




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On my last night of internship, I carried the entire stack of letters to the roof. I sat cross-legged and read each one aloud under the stars. Mrs. Hanley. Omar. The others. My seventeen-year-old self. My future self.

When I finished, I tore the letters into small pieces and let the wind take them. White paper floated into the night like snow.

I walked back down the metal stairs with empty hands and a steady heartbeat.

Tomorrow, there would be new patients, new shifts, new heartbreaks. But there would also be new letters — and maybe, one day, I would teach someone else to write theirs.

Because sometimes, healing doesn’t come from saving everyone. Sometimes, healing comes from letting yourself be human.