Tiny steps.
And somehow, her presence made each update feel like a lifeline.
I never knew her first name.
She never stayed long enough for me to ask.
But I felt safe when she was there—held together by the quiet strength she carried like a second heartbeat.
Life went on. I healed. My son grew. And eventually, those nights faded into the background of memory… or so I thought.
Two years later, I was folding laundry while the evening news played in the background. I wasn’t really watching—until I heard a familiar voice.
I looked up, and there she was on the screen.
The nurse.
The same soft smile, the same steady gaze that had pulled me back from the edge when everything was falling apart.
The reporter introduced her as a community volunteer who organized nighttime support for families with newborns in intensive care. A woman who spent her days working grueling hospital shifts and her nights comforting strangers going through the darkest moments of their lives.
But then the story shifted.
The reporter revealed something I never knew—
that she herself had once lost a baby shortly after birth.
That her grief had been so heavy it nearly crushed her.
And that instead of retreating from the world, she chose to step toward others who were living the same nightmare she once endured.
