PART 2 The nurse’s name was Nadine Fogarty. She parked her Corolla and came inside the coffee stand, still in her scrubs, still holding my phone. “Three years ago,” she said slowly, “I was a night nurse in hospice. There was a woman named Maureen Whitley. Ovarian cancer. She was only 41.”

died, he was there. He wouldn’t leave. Everyone else had gone home. He had nobody else.”

“So I stayed. After my shift. I sat with him until 7 in the morning.”

She wiped her eyes.

“I bought him a hot chocolate from the vending machine. It was all I could think to do.”

I stared at her.

A small hot chocolate.

Every single morning for a year.

“His name is Jonah,” Nadine whispered. “Jonah Whitley.”

We went to the hospital together that afternoon.

Nadine talked her way onto his unit.

She knew everyone.

Jonah was in bed four, still unconscious. His grandfather was sitting beside him, a quiet old man in a John Deere cap.

When Nadine told him who she was, the old man put his face in his hands.

“He talked about you,” he said. “The nurse who stayed. He found out where you worked last year. He