During my overnight nursing shifts, I started sitting with an elderly patient whom everyone else seemed to forget. We played chess, shared coffee, and talked through the quiet hours before dawn. The morning he died holding my hand, his sons arrived and changed my life with a single sentence.The hospital corridor smelled like disinfectant and something else—abandonment.
I pushed a medication cart down the hallway at 11 p.m., my third night shift of the week, my feet aching in shoes I’d bought at a thrift store three months ago.
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