Walking the Line: Where Protocol Meets Heart (Copy)
There are moments in healing work that etch themselves into the soul—those instances when the rules in the handbook don’t quite know what to do with the ache in a daughter’s eyes or the quiet courage of love in crisis.
It was during the height of COVID, and I was home, hunched over a school paper, when the call came in. Just five minutes away. Routine, or so it seemed. I grabbed my bag and headed out, not knowing I was about to walk into one of those soul-marking moments that would change me forever.
She greeted me at the door—an ICU nurse, tired but composed. Inside, her mother lay prone in the bedroom, a makeshift ICU wrapped in love and determination. IV poles rigged. Medical gear humming. A home transformed by devotion. Her oxygen saturation sat between 86–88%, far too low for safe IV fluids. By protocol, I should have turned away.
But the way her daughter looked at me—calm but pleading, not with desperation, but with a knowing—stopped me in my tracks. She knew what she was doing. She knew the risks. And she knew her mother.
I stood there in stillness, the weight of responsibility pressing hard against the softness of my heart. There was no supervisor to call. No clear answer. Just me, the pulse of this moment, and my intuition humming louder than any checklist.
I made the call.
I documented the numbers she gave me and administered the fluids.
And then came the agony. Her mother worsened. My heart sank into a pit of fear and guilt. I didn’t sleep that night. I kept refreshing my phone, praying for good news, haunted by the what-ifs. But the next morning, the message came: She made it. She had blood clots—something no one knew at the time. The fluids hadn’t harmed her. In fact, they may have helped.
That moment lives in my memory like a candle in the dark. A reminder that healing isn’t linear. That science is sacred, but so is love. That while protocols are written for the masses, care is delivered one human heart at a time.
Sometimes, the medicine lives in the gray. And in that space, we must learn to listen—not just to data, but to the wisdom of experience, to the quiet voice within, to the sacred bond between those who love and those who are letting go.
Journal Prompt:
Think of a time you felt torn between what was "right" and what felt true. When someone else’s decision, especially about health or healing, left you uncertain or even uncomfortable. What did it stir in you? Can you honor their path, even if it differs from what you'd choose? What does it mean to walk with grace in the gray?
