I became a nurse because I wanted to take care of people. I’ve spent twenty years believing that the work itself is the point, that showing up is what matters, that care has its own value even when nobody writes you a check for it. I’ve told patients’ families that. I’ve believed it.

Darlene believed it too, I think. She just believed it about family instead of strangers.

I don’t know what she’s going to do at 5:01 today, whether she files or she lets it go. And I genuinely don’t know what I’m going to tell her when she calls me in an hour. But I keep thinking about her on that Tuesday, nine days without leaving, crying quietly into the phone just because she needed to hear somebody’s voice.

She called me then because she trusted me.

I’m still trying to figure out what that means I owe her now.