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Heidi mostly sleeps. I'll sit with her for a few hours and then go take a nap myself.

This facility is nice; I mean, not the Ritz, but the staff are competant and caring. The aides just came in and changed Heidi's brief, and washed her up a little. She's giving out little moans with every breath. I hope she can go back to sleep.

Last week I was assigned the care of a woman who is dying of cancer. In the morning, first thing, we peek into the patient's room, and when they are awake, we nurses introduce ourselves, ask if they have any questions, and in there's anything that they need right now.

Heidi is about my age. She is fair skinned with long hair that was bright red but is going white now on top. Her face is worn and strong. When I introduced myself, she was in pain, so I went to get her some medication. Throughout the day, her pain never really went away, but it went down enough so that she could get some sleep.

When we nurses come in for a stretch of days, we're assigned the same patient's during that stretch. It's called continuity of care. If the patient wants to talk, you get to know them a bit. That day, Heidi wanted to talk.

"Well, I'm dying," she said. "I ... it's all so strange. It's all so scary and I don't know if there's something else I'm supposed to be doing? Just laying here and dying? Am I going to stay here in this room?" She rubbed her head. "I can't think, it hurts so much."

I began to talk with her, trying to suss out who her support network might be. Her husband had died of ALS twenty years ago. She'd never had children, her parents were gone, and she had no siblings. She had a friend that she'd been sharing an apartment with, but now the friend couldn't afford the rent and was going to move in with a daughter,several states away.

On and off through the day, she asked me questions about what might happen with her. She is on Medicaid and SSI, and I told her about how hospice worked with nursing homes.

She began to tell me stories of her life. Little snippets of this and that. She's lived in a lot of different places working mostly service jobs. "When John died, I didn't handle it well," she said. "Really, really didn't handle it well." She rubbed her head it the spot where the cancer was pressing. It really must hurt like hell. "I was homeless for a while, drugs, all that stuff. Tried to kill myself again." Her lips twisted, "Well, I don't have to worry about that now."

On the third day I was assigned to her, we were talking and she began to weep. "This is just so unfair. I've never been a bad person." I just sat there, listening, holding her hand. "But I guess that I let people go. My two best friends died, and I just never made any other friends. And now I've got no one." She let go of my hand to take some swipes at her cheeks, staying to rub at her temples. "I don't know how to do this by myself."

Her hands flopped in her lap, so I took one and squeezed it. "You aren't alone. I will help you."

We were sitting side by side on her hospital bed, and she leaned her weight against me. "How can you do that?" she said after a minute. "You don't even know me."

I shrugged. "How can I not?"

The next day, I was off. I'd told Heidi that I'd come in the afternoon to check on her. "I guess they're moving me," she said. I sat with her while the social worker went over the plan - the hospice service and the nursing home they were going to transfer her to. When the hospice nurse came, Heidi talked about her uncontrolled pain. The hospice nurse was excellent and decided to transfer Heidi to the inpatient hospice, instead of the nursing home, until her pain was controlled.

Heidi didn't have any clothes because she'd come by ambulance after collapsing at home; home was a couple hours away in rural Kentucky. But she had some of her SSI check left on her debit card, so while they set up transport to the hospice unit, I went and got her a couple of knit sleep pants and tops, and a comfortable pair of slippers.

After getting back with her new things, I sat with her until the transport came to take her to the hospice. "I'll come by tomorrow afternoon," I said.

So that's what I did. It's all kind of worrisome to me because I feel a little like I have no business doing this. Who am I to shephard this woman through her final days? I'm worried about screwing things up, but another part of me is saying that there's just not that much there that can be screwed up. It's mostly just being there for Heidi; listening to her stories and rubbing her back and getting her stuff that she wants. And I tell her what I know about nursing homes so that it's not so scary, and telling her that I'll come by after work and on my days off. I just can't not do it, you know?