A weapon.
My name is Dorothy May Hastings. I’m sixty-eight years old.
I worked as a registered nurse at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta for thirty-four years. I delivered babies, held the hands of dying men, cleaned wounds that would make most people turn away—and in all those years, I never called in sick unless I physically couldn’t stand.
I wasn’t raised to be fragile.
I grew up outside Macon with a mother who believed idle hands led to trouble, and a father who showed love by fixing things—tightening hinges, sharpening pencils, making sure the car always had gas.
By nineteen, I knew how to bake biscuits, check a fever without a thermometer, fold fitted sheets, balance a checkbook, and calm someone down just with my voice.
That last skill made me a good nurse.
And later… a very useful mother.
I retired at sixty-two—not because I was tired, but because Samuel got sick, and I wanted every moment left to belong to us.
Pancreatic cancer doesn’t negotiate. It doesn’t care about your plans, your family, or your timing. It arrives like a door slamming shut deep inside your life—and then it starts closing every other door, one by one.
