Knock-knock. The thumps sounded like someone from beyond this world knocking on his chest.

I thought of Bob Dylan’s Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.

As I pumped the heels of my hands into my patient’s gaunt chest, I hummed Stayin’ Alive to keep the rhythm of my strokes consistent.

Before I was a nursing student, I didn’t know CPR was so violent. So the first time I cracked someone’s chest in the ICU when I was a new graduate nurse, I almost stopped for a moment, surprised by the way my arms had plunged into the man’s body.

Her right hand trembled over the bedside phone. In her left hand was a laminated menu, worn at the corners, like her weathered hands. The cardiac acute care room was dimly lit, with sunlight peeking through the blinds.

I knocked softly on the doorframe. “I’m Akash,” I said, “a volunteer. May I take a seat?”

“My name is Kate,” she said, as her eyebrows drew together. She then turned back to the phone, as if she were waiting for the numbers to rearrange themselves into a pattern she recognized.

“May I help you order?” I asked.

The ICU nurse doesn’t look at the chart when she talks. “GCS four. Intubated, on propofol and fentanyl. No seizure activity overnight. Pupils sluggish but equal. Pressors stable.”

I glance back at the screen. “Oh,” I say, pointing. “And today’s her birthday, right?”

The nurse smiles. “Honey,” she says gently, “that’s what we put in the system for crash patients who come in alone. Until we know who they are, today has to be enough.”

What’s he wearing? An odd thing to ask about a dead man.

Nurses hear everything. I think I’ve heard it all, but I haven’t, even after more than two decades at the bedside.

Ash was sixty-nine years old. His mother, Ashley, who was named for her father (Ash’s grandfather), is eighty-six. She was working when Ash died, braiding hair at the mall, a temporary job to cover his deductible. She called to check in mid-shift, whimpered softly when we told her, then asked about his clothes.

I jumped when a woman cried out, “Albert! Albert! Someone help!” I rushed over to their table; told her I was a nurse. His head slumped next to the bill he had just paid. My fingers moved on their own to find his thready pulse. “Call 911,” I told the waiter. Albert was soaking wet with shock and sweat. His hand covered mine on the hospital white tablecloth. I bent close to his ear; told him I would stay until help arrived. He squeezed my hand in reply. We stayed tethered this way for nine long minutes. I had to

My seventh-grade social studies teacher posed a question: “Which professions are the most important?” We know-it-all adolescents shouted “Doctor!” “Lawyer!” “Accountant!” My teacher’s answer is seared into my memory: “Farmers, parents, teachers, nurses.” I was dumbfounded; my world paradigm shifted.

Hardly anyone forgets a first.

As a medical student, the first nurse I worked with on a pediatric ward was the formidable Ms. Shanta, who left a lasting impression. She wasted no time correcting a few cocky students, efficiently and without ceremony. “An old nurse is any day better than a new doctor,” she would say. And she was right.