The Night Nurse on the Third Floor

Margaret Healy worked the overnight shift at St. Luke's Hospital in Cedar Rapids for twenty-three years. Her patients would drift off around ten, and through those long, quiet hours — when monitors beeped and hallways dimmed — Margaret walked her rounds. Every forty-five minutes, she checked each room. She adjusted IV drips, repositioned pillows, listened to breathing. Her patients never knew how many times she stood in their doorway at 2 a.m., watching the gentle rise and fall of their chests.

Years later, a retired farmer named Dale Sorensen told his daughter something that stuck with her. "I was terrified the night before my surgery," he said. "But every time I woke up in the dark, there was Margaret. Standing right there. She'd say, 'I'm here, Dale. Go back to sleep.' And I did."

Dale never had to ask if someone was watching. He never had to wonder if he'd been forgotten in the small hours when fear crept closest. Margaret did not slumber. Margaret did not sleep.

The psalmist knew this kind of keeping. "He who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep." The Lord is not a God who clocks out, who sets His alarm for morning, who leaves us unattended in the dark stretches. He stands in the doorway of every anxious night, every uncertain hour, and speaks the same word over His children: I am here. You can rest now.