She smiled. “Kindness comes back around.”
One afternoon, a child cried in the hallway. Amy paused, listened, then left the room. Ten minutes later, she returned with a sticker, a juice box, and a smile.
“Still handing out food to make people feel better?” I teased.
She laughed. “Some things never change.”
On my last day, she helped with discharge papers and handed me a folded note.
“You probably don’t remember,” she said, “but you once made a list of things I was good at. You told me I was more than what people saw.”
Inside was that same list. Faded, but intact.
“You kept this?”
“It reminded me I mattered. That someone believed in me.”
Then she asked, “Want to get coffee sometime?”
I nodded. “Of course.”
Coffee turned into dinner. Dinner into walks. Walks into movie nights. And one evening, I finally said what I’d been holding onto for years:
“You were my favorite person back then. And I think you still are.”
She blushed. “You were the first person who made me feel important.”
We didn’t say much after that. We just held hands.
Life was gentle for a while. We worked weekends together. Amy kept her shifts. Then her mom got sick — pancreatic cancer, late stage.Continue reading…
