My name is Estelle Patterson, and I’m sixty-six years old. For forty-two years, I’ve been a nurse—not because it pays well or because it’s glamorous, but because somewhere deep in my bones, I believe that caring for people matters. That showing up when you’re exhausted matters. That holding someone’s hand during their worst moment can be the difference between despair and hope. I’ve worked double shifts when we’re understaffed. I’ve held babies whose mothers couldn’t. I’ve closed the eyes of patients who died alone, whispering prayers I’m not sure I believe in because they deserved something sacred in that final moment.
At sixty-six, most of my friends are retired or cutting back to part-time. They’re traveling, taking up hobbies, spending time with grandchildren. I’m still working fifty-hour weeks because retirement isn’t a luxury I can afford yet. The pension from forty-two years of nursing will help, but Social Security alone won’t cover my modest life. So I work. I show up. I do what needs doing.
And I thought I was doing the right thing when I let my son and his new wife move into my house six months ago.
That November evening started like any other grueling shift. I’d been at the hospital for twenty-six hours straight—a marathon that began Friday morning and bled into Saturday night. We were catastrophically understaffed, running on fumes and adrenaline, managing more patients than safety protocols recommend. I’d held the hand of an elderly woman dying of sepsis, her children scattered across the country and unable to arrive in time. I’d assisted in emergency surgery when a car accident victim came in with internal bleeding. I’d cleaned up more bodily fluids than I care to remember and smiled through it all because that’s what nurses do. We smile. We reassure. We pretend we’re not also falling apart.
By the time I finally clocked out at nearly eleven PM, every muscle in my body screamed. My feet, even in my comfortable nursing shoes, throbbed with each step. My lower back sent sharp protests up my spine—the price of years spent bending over hospital beds. My head ached with that peculiar exhaustion that comes from making life-or-death decisions while running on three hours of sleep and vending machine coffee.
All I wanted was to get home, drink a glass of water, maybe eat something if I had the energy, and collapse into bed for the ten hours before my next shift. Simple desires. Reasonable expectations after twenty-six hours of keeping other people alive.
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