~ a short story for those who remember what it meant to stay, even when it hurt ~
She died on a Wednesday.
That’s the part I never forget.
Not the tumor. Not the weight loss. Not the sound of her mother crying in the hallway. Just that it was Wednesday. Blue scrubs, coffee gone cold on the counter, and the smell of antiseptic that never leaves the inside of your nose, no matter how long you’ve been off shift.
Her name was Ellie. Eight years old, brown curls tied with a yellow ribbon, and she always had a joke ready for me.
“Why did the nurse carry a red pen?” she grinned once through cracked lips.
“In case she needed to draw blood.”
She told it like it was the greatest thing in the world. And maybe, for five seconds, it was. In that room, under fluorescent light, surrounded by machines that beeped when they shouldn’t and stayed silent when you prayed they wouldn’t — a joke like that could split the sky wide open.
Room 14 was the pediatric oncology corner. You didn’t get rotated in there unless you had a thick skin or no other options. I had neither. I was just 33, freshly divorced, and needed the overtime.
The other nurses warned me. “It’ll eat you alive if you’re soft.”
But maybe I needed to be eaten. Needed to feel something beyond paperwork and silence when I got home.
So I took the night shift. Four to midnight. I met Ellie on my third week.
She liked the hummingbird mural above her bed. Said it looked like it was flying toward her dreams. I told her I thought it was flying toward the window.
She shook her head. “Nope. It’s coming back.”
“Back from where?”
She looked at me with eyes older than anyone that small should’ve had.
“From where God lives.”
Ellie had osteosarcoma. Bone cancer. Started in the femur, spread like spilled ink. I don’t need to describe it. If you’ve ever watched someone wither, you already know. The pillows get flatter, the light gets colder, and the laughter gets quieter, like it’s afraid to wake death.
But Ellie — she never flinched. Never once.
She called me “Nurse Annie,” even when I wore my badge upside down. Said it made me sound like a cowboy. I started carrying two suckers in my left pocket — one for her, one for her mom — just to see her smile.
One night, close to the end, she took my hand while I checked her IV. Her voice was like paper by then.
“Annie?”
“Yeah, sweetheart?”
“I’m not scared of dying.”
I stopped what I was doing. Looked her right in the eye. “Okay.”
“I’m scared my mom won’t have anyone to braid her hair.”
That one broke me.
I took my break in the stairwell that night, sat on the concrete steps, and cried like a kid. Snot and all. I didn’t care who saw.
You don’t get trained for that. Not in nursing school. Not in life. There’s no chart that prepares you for a child comforting you about their death.
Her mother, Judith, used to bring a sunflower every Wednesday. Said Ellie liked how they turned toward the sun. After the funeral, she gave me a pressed one — flat and fragile, between wax paper.
I kept it in my locker for years. Now it’s taped to the back of a shoebox in my closet. I take it out every August 17th.
Ellie’s birthday.
I’m retired now.
Been twenty-three years since Room 14. I live in a one-bedroom in Dayton, across from a park with too many crows. I haven’t worn scrubs since 2009. My knees are bad, my hands shake when I’m nervous, and my ex passed away last year — the same way Ellie did, only slower.
But every year, on her birthday, I bring a sunflower to the children’s wing at St. Mary’s. I don’t tell them why. I just leave it at the nurses’ desk, nod to whoever’s on duty, and walk out before I start crying.
I don’t think they know who I am. And that’s okay.
I know.
There’s something they don’t tell you about caregiving. About the quiet kind of bravery it takes to stand beside a bed and not run. To smile when someone’s slipping away. To keep your voice calm when a mother’s world is ending in slow motion.
It doesn’t make you strong. It just makes you human. Fully, painfully, vulnerably human.
I wasn’t always that.
But in Room 14, I was.
For those months, I was the kind of woman I’d want to meet if I were dying. Gentle. Steady. Present.
Ellie gave me that gift.
She reminded me who I could be.
The world’s different now.
Hospitals have tablets and robots and things I don’t understand. People argue on the news about who deserves care, about what’s worth funding. Sometimes I watch it all and wonder where we’re headed.
But then I see a sunflower in someone’s yard, or a kid skipping with a yellow ribbon in her hair, and I remember that one small kindness — one nurse staying through the night — can still mean something.
Still does mean something.
I keep a photo of Ellie on my bookshelf. She’s holding a juice box and giving a thumbs up with a bandaged hand. There’s an IV taped to her arm and a sticker on her cheek.
It’s not a perfect photo.
But it’s the truest thing I own.
I don’t need you to feel sorry. That’s not why I’m writing this.
I just want you to remember.
Maybe you were the nurse. Maybe the parent. Maybe the kid.
But if you ever sat in a hard hospital chair and watched the sun rise while someone you loved kept breathing —
you were brave too.
And maybe it still hurts. Maybe you’ve filed it away, like an old chart with frayed corners.
But someone remembers.
I do.
I was the nurse in Room 14.
And I remember the girl who wasn’t afraid to die.
Only afraid that her mom would miss her.
She does.
I do.
We all do.
And we’re still turning toward the sun.
