The black-and-white headshot from 1941 had yellowed slightly with the passing of time. From back then, Viv Barrow beamed up at her daughter in the here and now, while Lyn Barrow stared down at the wartime nightingale. “Were you once that happy, Mom?” she asked. The dying nurse didn’t answer. Lyn returned the photo to its place on the bedside table. Snapped in Edmonton on the day of her graduation, the Viv in the picture wore a white uniform with a nurse’s cap pinned into her upswept forties’ hairstyle and a starched bib tucked into what was most likely an ankle-length skirt. The twenty-two-year-old RN’s complexion was as fresh as country cream; her dark eyes were full of the dreams that only people that age can believe in, and her smile was as bright as the sun on the prairies. Her arm was clutched around a bouquet of roses that had to be blood red. The hallway outside her hospital room was shushing down for the night. Soon it would be time for Lyn to leave, so she sat down beside the palliative-care bed and reached in through the bars to take Viv’s arthritic hand in her own.
