“Well, she asked if you’d—”
“No, I meant the dishes,” he explained.
“I don’t mind.” I was extremely uncomfortable with people cleaning up after me. Even when I stayed at hotels, I always made the bed, and made sure that everything was picked up, and even took the liners out of the waste baskets and tied them off to make the cleaners’ job easier.
I put the dishes in the dishwasher and shut it when he asked, “Did you always want to be a nurse?”
“No. I wanted to be a veterinarian until I was thirteen.”
“What happened when you were thirteen?”
“I had a neighbor, Mr. Wells who was sort of like a grandfather figure to me. My mom was not around a lot. When she was home, she was more interested in whatever guy she was seeing than me. Mr. Wells let me come over and watch movies and we played Scrabble and Yahtzee. He helped me with my homework and taught me how to care for plants.
“One day when I came home from school, he wasn’t home. Mrs. Kovak from across the hall told me that he’d been taken to the hospital. About a month later, he did come home and a nurse was with him. I didn’t understand what hospice was, I thought he was better. There was a nurse that came to see him a few times a week, Julie. She was so kind and, I don’t know, I just felt better, safer when she was around. I wanted to be a Julie in people’s lives. It was what made me want to be a nurse.”
I thought about Mr. Wells and Julie almost daily, but I never spoke about them. It was strange to say their names out loud.
“I’m really glad that Mr. Wells was there for you.”
The sincerity and caring in his response made me feel…seen, something I rarely felt. Which meant I’d definitely stepped over my self-imposed professional boundary. When I cared for patients, it should never be about me.
I grinned, “I better—”
“Get back,” Nick cut me off, finishing my sentence.
I smiled. “Yeah.”
On the way back to the room, I did my best to ignore the way I felt when he’d listened to me, heard me, and actually cared. It didn’t matter. If anything, that was just more of a reason for me to stay away from him.
