Today, a man in his sixties looked at me and said, 'I’m not scared of the dark, but I am of what comes after.' I didn’t fix it. Just held his hand, nodded, and said, 'We’ll be right here.' The anesthetic went in slow—no rush, no noise. He drifted off mid-sentence. That silence between breaths? That’s where the work really begins. Not the drugs, not the monitors. The space between knowing and not knowing. I’ve seen it a thousand times, but it still feels like something sacred.