I was famous for not crying.
Six years of codes, final breaths, and families folding in half in hospital corridors.
I stayed calm because somebody in the room always had to.
That nurse cried.
Not delicately.
The kind of crying that startles medical staff.
Because she was here.
Because she was safe.
Because the two people who should have been pacing the waiting room with terrible gas-station coffee had no idea she existed.
One because he was gone.
The other because she had hung up before I could tell her.
