I had constructed an enormous obstacle out of nothing — I had convinced myself that hospitals would not release a nurse’s name, that there would be privacy rules, that she might not want to be found.

Her name is in the chart.

It is in my son’s chart nine times, in nursing notes, with credentials after it.

She had been on that unit for the whole of the second and part of the third of March.

She is not anonymous and never was.

I wrote to her care of the hospital in the November of the third year and she answered in nine days and we met in a coffee place on Monroe Street in the January.

She is thirty-three now.