Slowly, something shifted. I started baking again. Lemon cookies, mostly. I brought them to the nurses, left them in the break room with silly notes.
I found myself laughing when a patient’s teenage daughter hugged me after her father’s surgery. She smelled of cheap shampoo and hope.
I called her immediately. We talked for hours. She admitted she had been drowning—her mom’s early Alzheimer’s, her own exhaustion. She hadn’t forgotten my birthday. She just couldn’t face it.
We met for dinner that Sunday. She brought a single carrot cupcake with one candle.
“You get a redo,” she said.
I blew it out. No wishes. Just breath.
Loss, Again
Three months later, Jinny’s number lit up my phone. But it wasn’t her voice—it was her nephew’s.
“She passed away last night,” he told me. “She talked about you a lot. Said you made her feel useful again.”
I sat in the staff locker room, crying into my knees.
At her memorial, he handed me a small envelope. Inside was her handwriting:
“Dear Anna,
Kindness has long legs—it walks farther than we think. Your mom knew that. So do you.
Keep walking.
Love,
Jinny.”
