My Dad Aban:doned My Mom When He Found Out About Her Can:cer Diagnosis, Saying ‘I’m Not a Nurse’ – Ten Years Later, Karma Paid Him a Visit

“You’d be a good one.”

***

The doctors said the word “remission” when I was 19. It felt like someone had finally opened a window after years in a dark room.

Jason graduated from high school. I finished nursing school. Life slowly started moving forward again.

And Dad? He disappeared. We heard things here and there. Someone said he married Brittany. Someone else said that he started a consulting business. But he never called, wrote, or showed up.

Eventually, we stopped expecting him to.

And Dad? He disappeared.

Ten years after he walked out, I was the head nurse at a long-term neurological care facility.

We took the cases that most hospitals didn’t want.

Stroke patients, brain injuries, and permanent paralysis.

The kinds of patients who needed patience more than medicine.

***

Last week, I sat at the nurses’ station finishing paperwork when the social worker approached with a thick file.

She sighed as she dropped it on the desk. “New admission from the ER. Massive cerebral infarct.”