February weeknight, 11:47 PM, and my car won't start in the hospital parking lot.
Phone at 4%. I'm an ER nurse, I've been on my feet for twelve hours, and now this.
I dug through my wallet for a scrap of paper to write a note for the windshield. Found a train ticket stub instead.
It's from three years ago. I'd been running late, exhausted, no seat left. A woman with gray hair and a grocery bag stood up and said, 'Take mine. I'm getting off soon.' She wasn't.
She rode standing for two more stops, her bag bumping my knee. I still have the stub to prove it.
I sat in the cold car, holding that tiny piece of cardboard. And I called my brother. He came with jumper cables in twenty minutes.
Small things. A seat given. A ticket saved. A brother who answers. Enough to get me home.