The nurse in this O. Henry Prize-winning story is Mary McDonald. She’s been a nurse for over 40 years and understands fully that the new pain she feels is a signal of her cancer’s spread, and for her, the beginning of the end. The remainder of this story is a retrospective of her life as a nurse and most significantly her role in forming a union, thirty years previously, at the local hospital.

Deftly placed between her reminiscences are scenes of her children’s visits to their dying mother, and perhaps as a final legacy to her nursing colleagues, Mary’s attempt to convince Eunice, her caretaker at the nursing home, to unionize the facility.