That was three years ago. Today, she is thirty-two. She still works nights, but now she keeps a journal in her locker—a blue one with a cracked spine. She still holds dying children’s hands, but now she lets herself cry in the break room afterward, and the other nurses don’t stare. They bring her tea.
She cried for Leo. She cried for her father. She cried for the girl who erased her poems, for the woman who became a nurse because saving others was easier than saving herself. She cried for every night she had lain awake counting ceiling tiles, for every time she had chosen silence over the terrifying risk of being known. justdanica