“Yeah, I heard what happened with your parents. That’s… there aren’t really words for how messed up that is.”
I started crying again. I seemed to do nothing but cry that day. Rachel didn’t tell me to stop or that everything would be okay. She just handed me tissues and waited.
When I finally calmed down, she said, “I’m not going to lie to you, Sarah. The next few years are going to be hard. Cancer treatment is rough. But you know what? You’re tougher than cancer. You’re tougher than parents who don’t deserve you. And you’re not alone. I’m going to be here every step of the way.”
“You don’t even know me,” I said.
“Not yet, but I’m going to. And I have a feeling you’re pretty remarkable.”
That night after she’d finished her rounds, Rachel came back to my room with a deck of cards. We played go fish until 2 a.m. and she told me about her life. She was divorced, no kids of her own, had always wanted to be a mother, but it hadn’t worked out. She lived in a small house 15 minutes from the hospital, had a cat named Pancake, and was obsessed with murder mystery podcasts.
“Why nursing?” I asked at one point.
“My little brother had leukemia when I was 18,” she said quietly. “He beat it. He’s 28 now, married, has a kid. But I remember what it was like watching him go through treatment. I remember the nurses who made a difference and the ones who were just doing a job. I wanted to be the kind who makes a difference.”
“Did your parents abandon him?” The question came out before I could stop it.
“God, no. My whole family rallied around him. My parents went broke paying for things insurance didn’t cover, and they never once complained. That’s what parents do, Sarah. Real parents.”
Over the next month, as I went through induction chemotherapy, Rachel became more than my nurse. She became my advocate, my protector, and my friend.
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