And there is such courage, and it has its place.

But the courage I witnessed in that ICU bay was the other kind, the quiet kind, the kind that does not look like courage at all because it makes no noise and strikes no pose.

A woman who had every reason to collapse entirely into her own catastrophe, who would have been forgiven by anyone for thinking of nothing but her own shattered heart, instead turned her failing strength outward — toward the evidence, toward the case, toward the protection of a future she would not necessarily be part of and strangers she would never meet.

There is a particular nobility in that, and it is easy to miss because it is so undramatic: a person at the absolute bottom of their own suffering, still thinking about the good of others.