PART 2
The nurse’s name was Nadine Fogarty.
She parked her Corolla and came inside the coffee stand, still in her scrubs, still holding my phone.
“Three years ago,” she said slowly, “I was a night nurse in hospice. There was a woman named Maureen Whitley. Ovarian cancer. She was only 41.”
She looked at the photo again.
“Her son came every night after school. Fourteen years old. He’d sit in the corner and do his homework so she wouldn’t worry about his grades.”
Her voice cracked.
“The night she died, he was there. He wouldn’t leave. Everyone else had gone home. He had nobody else.”
“So I stayed. After my shift. I sat with him until 7 in the morning.”
She wiped her eyes.
“I bought him a hot chocolate from the vending machine. It was all I could think to do.”
I stared at her.
A small hot chocolate.
