PART 1
When I first started working at the nursing home, I never imagined that one resident would change the course of my life. Back then,Ali I believed I was the one helping her. I had no idea she had been quietly helping me, too.
The nursing home was small, always carrying the scent of lemon cleaner, warm tea, and old paperbacks. After a year there as an orderly, it had begun to feel more like home than most places I had lived.
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And that place had plenty of them.
Most of the residents barely noticed me at first.
Except for Gloria.
Gloria was eighty-two, stubborn, sharp-minded, and somehow able to make everyone around her smile without even trying.
The first time I brought her breakfast tray, she looked me up and down and said, “You’re new. But you don’t move like someone new. You’ve been carrying trays your whole life, haven’t you?”
I laughed. “Something like that. I’m Daniel.”
“Well, Daniel,” she said, patting the chair beside her bed, “sit for a minute. Tell me about yourself.”
No one had asked me that in years.
