The Stranger on the Bus

I was riding the bus home from a shift at the hospital where I work as a nurse. I was at the end of a very hard week — a patient I had cared for had passed, and I was carrying it heavily. An elderly man got on and sat across from me. He looked at me for a moment and then said quietly, "You carry other people's pain as your own. That is a gift. But you are allowed to set it down sometimes." Then he got off at the next stop. I don't know how he knew what he knew. I went home and slept for eleven hours for the first time in months.