…six o’clock this morning.” I looked up from the card. Through the glass doors at the end of the hallway, the sun was just coming up. And sitting in the family waiting area, in plastic chairs, holding cups of vending-machine coffee, were about thirty people.
I walked down the hall slowly. An older woman stood up first. “You don’t remember me,” she said. “Room 4, last February. My husband, Gerald. You stayed after your shift ended because I fell asleep and you didn’t want him to wake up alone.” Behind her, a young man stood up. “Room 11. My grandmother. You sang to her.” Then a couple with a little girl. “Room 7. Our son. You held him while we signed the papers.”
One by one, they told me. Twelve families. Every patient I’d sat with at the end of their life, for six years, during the night shift, when no one else was there. I’d never charted it. I didn’t think it mattered to anyone but me.
The hospital chaplain stepped forward. “A few of them found each other in our grief group,” she said. “They realized they were all talking about the same nurse. Marissa from nights. So they started baking. The laundromat is Mrs. Patel’s. She owns the building. She lets us use the return address.”
“And Room 9?” I whispered. “He had no one.” The chaplain smiled. “He does now. When we told them about him, they voted to adopt him. They’ll be at his funeral on Saturday. All thirty.”
I couldn’t speak. I sat down in one of the plastic chairs and cried in front of my whole shift. Gerald’s widow put her arm around me and handed me a cookie. It was still warm.
They still come every Monday. Now, though, there’s a second box. “For whoever is sitting with someone tonight.” I put it on the counter at the end of every shift. It’s always empty by morning.
