NIGHT S HIF T

Cooper Hotel

PM11:49

Rooms here start at $199 a night and it’s easy to see why. The lobby, decorated in shades of blue and grey, is ritzy yet comfortable. Not only is Tamuka Gwatidzo, the night auditor, wide awake, he’s dressed impeccably in a suit jacket and alligator boots. For him, this is typical. When he’s not on the clock, he’s busy working on an organization he founded called Distinguished Gentleman of Dallas (DGD). DGD teaches young men to take pride in their appearances and engage in chivalrous behavior.

PM11:51 office. It displays security footage, so he can keep an eye on the front desk. Things are pretty quiet from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., the shift he works five days a week, but Gwatidzo doesn’t mind. In fact, he enjoys the solitude.

He began working as a night auditor in 2009, because “it made it easier to have a fulltime job and go to college.” He’s approaching his final semester at Fisk University, in Nashville, Tenn. Living in Dallas is no problem, thanks to online courses. Gwatidzo majors in political science for reasons that are deeply personal.

“I’m from Zimbabwe,” he explains. “When I started college, the political atmosphere back home was hectic. [There was an election going on]. We’d had the same president since the 1980s. He wouldn’t let go of power … I wanted to see how [politics] worked.”

If everything at the hotel is in order and all of his school assignments are complete, Gwatidzo turns to Netflix. “How I Met Your Mother” is his favorite show and he’s seen almost every episode.

AM

12:13

After about 15 minutes of inactivity, two things happen in rapid succession — the phone rings and a man delivers a stack of newspapers. Gwatidzo greets him fondly. “We see each other everyday,” he says. “He always comes around the same time.” Human interaction is rare during Gwatidzo’s shift. Most of the hotel guests are asleep by

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“As a night auditor, you’re the front desk agent, the manager, the housekeeper — you’re basically everything.” the time he arrives. Some emerge around 5:30 a.m. to work out and he points them toward the adjacent Cooper Aerobics Center. But before Gwatidzo got this job, he worked in Nashville at the second largest Holiday Inn in the country and things occasionally got hectic.

Once, a group of guests hung their clothes on the in-room fire sprinklers and water gushed everywhere.

“It was one of my first weeks there and it was just me,” Gwatidzo says. “As a night auditor, you’re the front desk agent, the manager, the housekeeper — you’re basically everything.”

Luckily, he had volunteered as a firefighter and knew how to shut off the sprinklers. The crisis was resolved messily but quickly. He remembers another time, at the same hotel, a long-term guest was arrested for making counterfeit money in his room.

“It was very interesting,” Gwatidzo says diplomatically. “It’s a different experience at Cooper. It’s smaller — there are only 61 rooms.”

AM12:32

For purposes of this story, Gwatidzo leaves his post to walk around the grounds. There’s a heated pool outside, surrounded by lights. Since it’s after midnight and dark, you can see the steam rise. It’s objectively beautiful.

Crossing the breezeway, Gwatidzo bumps into a security guard. He introduces her as

AM12:45

As Gwatidzo walks around the property, he mentions that he’s stayed in one of the suites before, during an ice storm, free of charge. His room, like all the others, had a coffee maker, but he didn’t use it.

“I don’t drink coffee,” he says without jest.

Considering his schedule, this is the most shocking revelation of the night.

— Elizabeth Barbee

Shift

Medical City Emergency Room

AM

2:49

Kelly Wiggins is a couple hours into her shift at Medical City Emergency Room in Preston Center. She’s wearing scrubs, which feel like pajamas, a blessing at this time of night. Thanks to a few cans of Diet Dr. Pepper, she’s upbeat and alert.

“I’m trying to cut back [on soda],” she swears. “I’ve been trying to drink more water.”

When she gets hungry, around 6 or 7 a.m., she’ll probably eat chicken nuggets or “supper” food. For her, it actually is suppertime.

Wiggins is accustomed to this schedule and this diet. She works overnight five times a week, sometimes here and sometimes at Medical City’s main campus on Forest Lane. Though her hours are strange, she loves being a nurse.

“I think it takes a very strong person to see people at their worst and comfort them and convince them you are trying to help,” she says. “It wasn’t a question of if I’d go to school for nursing but when.”

Wiggins, the youngest of four girls, grew up in North Carolina, near Fort Bragg. Both her parents are altruistic to a fault and clearly inspirational figures in her life.

“My mother was the first female EMT [Emergency Medical Technician] in our town many years ago,” she explains. “And my dad was a volunteer firefighter. He’d get calls during the night and if [my sisters and I] didn’t have school the next day we could go with him … I never lived a sheltered life and I always saw people helping people.”

Wiggins is a travelling nurse and has been for four years. Most of her contracts last about 13 weeks, meaning she’s lived in a lot of cities.

“I usually sign a three month lease and that’s expensive [to do],” she admits. “But you get so many opportunities to see places you wouldn’t ordinarily see and meet a different variety of people.”

AM

3:18

In a room down the hall, you’ll find Amin Bayat, a laboratory technician. He has the same positive attitude about his crazy schedule as Wiggins and also splits his time be- tween this satellite building and the main campus. He tests specimen for “pretty much everything,” including kidney, heart and liver health. Notably, he isn’t wearing a lab coat.

“There are hard procedures we have to follow,” he explains. “The policy says you don’t have to wear a lab coat unless you are working with specimen.”

At the moment, Bayat isn’t working with specimen because it’s 3:18 a.m. and there are no patients.

AM3:27

Two women take a break at the nursing station. They are Angie Cagle, a radiology technician, and Rachel Armstead, another nurse on duty. Their conversation revolves around medical TV dramas like “Code Black” and “Chicago Med” — funnily enough, “The Night Shift” doesn’t come up.

“I like to watch [the medical dramas] and criticize them,” Armstead says, laughing. “They’re all wrong!”

Cagle agrees that most of what you see on T.V. is inaccurate. Then she excuses herself to retrieve a Monster energy drink.

AM3:33

Cagle returns with said energy drink.

“I have to hunt this flavor down,” she notes. “I can’t find it anywhere but QT.”

AM3:50

The conversation turns, gradually but significantly, more somber. Like the rest of the staff on duty, both ladies also work at Medical City proper. Though the Preston Center location is relatively quiet this time of night, they say the main campus can get intense. They discuss what it feels like to see someone in excruciating pain. Cagle has shed tears out of empathy for patients, but she always holds it together while she’s at work, operating the computerized tomography (CT) scanner.

Armstead takes a deep breath and nods. She’s had similar experiences: “Sometimes you have to put your big girl panties on and do what you need to do to get the job done.”

— Elizabeth Barbee