Intensive Care

At a busy bus stop, a young woman with kindly brown eyes stepped forward. “You look very good,” she said, patting my arm. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Do I know you?” But the comforting voice? It felt familiar. “Oh,” she said. “I was your nurse when you were in intensive care at the Montreal General Hospital. You could have died,” she added. I remembered my head in clamps, nervous voices, but the nurse always there, encouraging me to talk. I’d had a viral inflammation of the brain. I breathed in deeply. Had she saved my life? “Thank you” I said.

This article was originally published on the Five Minutes literary website.