People ask me sometimes why I didn't just sign the sheet.
It's a fair question. Everyone has had a night like that. You're tired, you trust the person in front of you, the paperwork is a formality, and the favor is small. A few hours. A friend in need. A signature on a line.
I tell them what I can. I tell them that a nurse I trusted asked me to put my name on a night log, and that I checked the medication room first, and that I found a vial that should not have been there, and that a man is alive because of it. I tell them that she had done it before, years ago, and that a family had been paid off and a record had been buried, and that she had counted on me being the kind of person who would sign without reading.
I do not tell them about the words.
They are mine, and I have come to thi
