During the fourteen days I spent in the hospital, time stopped behaving normally. Days blurred into nights, and the room—full of beeping machines and whispering oxygen—still felt painfully empty.
My children called when they could, busy with lives of their own. Friends promised visits that rarely came. Visiting hours passed like a tide that never reached my bed.
Loneliness doesn’t crash. It settles beside you.
Then, every evening, just before the ward grew quiet, a nurse would appear. A man with calm movements and a gentle voice. He asked about my pain, adjusted my blanket, made sure I could rest.
“Take it one day at a time,” he’d tell me. “You’re stronger than this moment.”
They were simple words, but they made me feel seen. Human. I began to wait for those visits.
When I was discharged, I stopped at the front desk to thank him.
They checked the schedules.
“There was no male nurse assigned to your room,” they said. My entire care team had been female.
I went home unsettled.
Weeks later, unpacking my bag, I found a folded note at the bottom.
Don’t lose hope. You’re stronger than you think.
No name. No date.
I still don’t know who left it.
But I know this—someone, or something, reached me when I needed it most.
