The Child Who Called Me Mom

It must have slipped off during the night’s wash. A strip of white plastic stuck out from the brake, just far enough to catch her eye as she bent to plug in the pulse oximeter. She picked it up between two fingers. NINA VALETTE, seven years old, born March 7, 2019. The barcode was scratched through the middle, and the clasp no longer held.

A seven-year-old girl in the hospital calls her nurse ‘Mom’—and knows her lullaby.