“Do you have any idea what it’s like?” She’s full-on bawling now. “To watch your life pass you by? To see everyone you’veever known leave your hometown, go to college, find their calling? Get married, have kids, have something to call their own?All while you stay in one place, itching to be out there and knowing you can never, ever do that?”
Each word is a dagger straight to my chest. Suddenly, it isn’t Ginny I’m seeing anymore—it’s the hundreds of burned-outcaretakers I’ve watched break down in the hospital. All those people whose lives are frozen, who never get to clock outbecause they never had the choice of not clocking in in the first place.
The guilt hits in waves.
Ginny wipes her eyes with the back of her sleeve. “Eli will be fine with Brad,
