My Mom came to the ED Wednesday afternoon then transferred from the ED to this unit to await surgery on Thursday. The transfer was at 11pm and Rick was exceedingly patient and generous in how he was connecting with my mom. In the little things like removing a bandage on her finger left over from the ED, he gently and kindly said, “D, I am going to try very hard not to hurt you as I remove this (my mom has RA-affected joints in her hands), he said please tell me if I cause any pain so I can change my strategy.” Rick humanized my mom in every interaction and treated her like she mattered to him. When asking my mom the mandatory questions, he made them matter in a way that mandatory intake questions normally fail to do. Hospitals are corporate structures, and while policies and systems can attempt to be accessible, hospitals are always going to be nebulous power structures. But Rick made the corporate machine fade away for my mom and me, and I am forever grateful. My daughter is graduating from UNE nursing school this spring, and I told her about this nurse and said, “I want you to be like Rick and remember how much good care this nurse gave makes all the difference."