“Goodnight, my sweet girls,” I said, and kissed each of them, and told them I loved them, and I stepped out into the hallway and left their bedroom door standing wide open, so the warm yellow light from the hall spilled across their floor.

She sleeps with the door open now, and the hall light on, and it is not fear anymore that keeps it that way.

It is just how we live.

In our house, the light gets left on, and the doors stay open, and no one is ever kept in the dark.

For ten years I had believed my whole purpose was to repair the broken bodies that arrived on my shift — that my job in life was to stay quiet, follow protocol, endure hardship without complaint, and keep the peace even when my own marriage had gone cold and hollow around me.

That freezing morning shattered that belief, and I am grateful, now, that it did.