Being a nurse is so much harder than I ever imagined. There are nights I question why I worked so hard, why I pushed myself through years of school and exhaustion, only to feel defeated and beat down. But then there are moments like tonight.
Sitting beside a patient who’s breaking under the weight of everything, who feels hopeless and ready to give up, I see a kind of pain that words can’t fix. All I can do is stay. So I hold their hand, and after a few tears, something shifts. They take a shaky breath, look at me, and ask, “Do you got me?” And I say, “I got you.”
Watching someone walk through hell and still find the strength to rise… it reaches somewhere I can’t explain. Their resilience becomes mine. And in that moment, I remember exactly why I became a nurse.