recognize what matters immediately and what can wait.
Someone has to explain things to a family whose fear is making it difficult to absorb anything.
That person was often me.
In emergency medicine, you learn quickly that panic can come later.
Later, you can sit alone in your car and shake.
Later, you can cry in the parking garage.
Later, you can replay the shift until dawn.
But inside the room, you stay clear.
Clarity first.
Always.
I had learned another kind of endurance from my mother.
Two years before
