Paula Roc was born one night in September in the neighbourhood of Gracia. She has always had a passion for medicine but was never able to practice, as she has since a small girl felt faint at the sight of blood. And so she decided to spend her life writing: this way she could experience the lives and the passions that, due to a lack of time, fear or good sense, she could never experience first hand. 'Noches de guardia,' then, is everything that Paula Roque would like to have been if she'd had seven lives: a medical student, a future junior doctor, a nurse and, who knows, a great neurosurgeon.