I work exhaustive, back to back double shifts as a nurse at the local hospital to ensure my two young boys remain fed and housed, and every single day, I carry a quiet, heavy fear that something catastrophic will go wrong while I am away. The terrifying day a police officer stood directly in my driveway holding my toddler, I was entirely convinced that my worst nightmare had finally come true, but the reality of the situation turned out to be something completely unexpected. My phone vibrated sharply in my scrub pocket at exactly eleven forty two in the morning, right in the middle of attending to a critical patient in room seven. I almost let the call go entirely to voicemail since I had three more patients to monitor and my scheduled break wasn’t until two in the afternoon, but a sudden, unexplainable maternal instinct compelled me to excuse myself, step out into the quiet hallway, and check the screen. Seeing an unknown number, I answered with a racing pulse, only to hear the grave voice of Officer Benny from dispatch informing me that while my children were physically safe, I needed to abandon my shift and come home immediately because my older son had been involved in a serious situation.dhoom
The call abruptly ended before I could ask a single follow up question, leaving me leaning heavily against the hospital wall as my mind raced through every terrifying scenario. I frantically informed my charge nurse that I had an absolute family emergency and sprinted out of the building in the middle of my shift, still wearing my official hospital identification badge. I drove completely recklessly on the way home, passing right through two red lights because the drive was twenty minutes long and I spent every single agonizing second rehearsing the absolute worst case scenarios in my head. My oldest son, Logan, was seventeen years old and while he was fundamentally a good kid, he had experienced two minor run ins with the local police in our small town that made me incredibly anxious. When he was fourteen, his friends organized a chaotic bicycle race that ended with them nearly obliterating a parked car, resulting in a firm lecture from law enforcement, and at sixteen, he had secretly slipped out of school to watch his best friend play in a regional soccer tournament. In a tightly knit town like ours, people tend to remember even the smallest youthful mistakes, and it always felt like Logan was watched just a little bit closer than the other kids his age.
