You often hear nurses described as angels on earth. In my 23 years as a healthcare professional, I had never encountered an “angelic nurse” myself. That is, until my mother was admitted to the ICU at Reston Hospital and given April Chenoweth as her ICU nurse.

My mother suffered a series of falls and severe injuries (broken femur, broken hip/ankle, surgical site infection, washouts, even a Girdlestone procedure in which ortho removed her hip joint). She had been in and out of Reston Hospital, Fair Oaks, VHC, assisted living, subacute rehab, and acute rehab at Reston (my parents loved it there so much they paid for several days out of pocket to allow her to stay longer). Despite her condition, my mother always bounced back and somehow never got sepsis throughout her entire ordeal.

My mother was going on six weeks at a subacute rehab facility in Sterling. I visited her on the weekends, and she always seemed like her cantankerous self. Then my father, who spent every day by her side, called me in the middle of one week and asked me to come see her. I ducked out on my lunch break, thinking I could make a quick trip to see her and then head back to work. What I encountered was someone who looked like she had been living in a concentration camp. My mom was completely emaciated, her skin yellow, her eyes sunken, barely able to speak. I quickly realized she had no peripheral pulse and called 911.

She was taken to Reston’s ER, where she was immediately cared for, including having a central line put in place, and was started on a low-dose pressor. She showed instantaneous signs of improvement. She even gave my dad a hard time about a pair of earrings he bought her for Christmas that she wanted him to return. My father and I believed she was headed in the right direction, so we went home for the night.

Early the next morning, we received a call from my brother saying the hospital had called him and told him the family needed to come to the hospital immediately to say goodbye. The wild thing about that is that my brother lives in New Jersey and was not on any call list, as he is not in healthcare and is not local. By the grace of God, someone found his number and called him first so he could get on the road to say goodbye to our mother.

My father and I raced over to Reston and found my mother in severe distress in the ICU. Her nurse, April Chenoweth, was at her bedside. At first, April was very protective of my mother, including her arterial line. But once I told her I was a nurse, she allowed me to essentially call the shots for what to do and when to do it for the duration of my mother’s final hours. Shortly after I arrived, my sister and her family from Maryland made it to the hospital.

My mother had recently signed a DNR, so we knew her final wishes. The ICU team was amenable to whatever decisions we wanted to make in terms of further efforts, but they were also complimentary when we conceded to do comfort care and keep my mother alive until my brother got in from New Jersey. It made us feel like we were making the right decision.

It seemed like April was in the room for the duration of those final hours. She was omnipresent, always there when you had a question or needed something. But at the same time, it was also as if she wasn’t there, allowing our family to grieve and speak freely and comfortably. At times, she interjected, offered to play my mother’s favorite music, and even shared that her own mother had passed away recently.

When I wasn’t looking, April closed my mother’s eyes so that I no longer had to bear the pain of staring into my mother’s eyes as the life went out of them. My brother-in-law later told me what April did, and I was so appreciative of this tiny gesture that relieved a huge burden. April did countless little things like that to take care of my mother, but also to take care of all of us.

April got the comfort cart to the bedside, which was wonderful, so we didn’t have to roam the hallways crying to find a bottle of water. April offered us a chaplain, and as soon as I told her we wanted one, she immediately got one. She let me oversee the sequence of events, as much as possible in this situation, while also supporting me and the rest of my family and expertly caring for my mother.

April also asked if I wanted her to keep the cardiac monitor in the room on so that I could see what rhythm her heart was in and explain to my family what was happening. When my mother’s heartbeat was down to random junctional beats, April immediately turned the monitor off when I asked her to.

After my mother died, I clearly remember my sister asking, “What do we do now?” Again, April was there to lead us through the next steps, as only an expert could. As we prepared to leave, we all asked for a hug from April. We are not particularly huggy people, but how she supported us through this immensely difficult time was nothing short of extraordinary. We felt connected to her, as if she were part of the family.

April did so many little things that provided strength and support to me and my family through one of the most difficult experiences of our lives. We are forever grateful to her. Because of how April led us through the final hours of my mother’s life, we were all at peace with the outcome, despite being devastated to lose the matriarch of our family.

There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think of April. I never could have come to work at a hospital where my mother died if I didn’t believe she received the best end-of-life care one could hope for, which was largely due to our angel, April.