Recently I was called to a patient’s room to speak to a husband. As a Nurse Manager, usually, you grit your teeth as you know you are in for an earful. However, this situation was completely different. The husband had called me in to praise the staff. He wanted to talk about how wonderful they had been to him and his wife, who was a patient. The husband and his wife had met when they were six years old and had been best friends ever since (for more than 60 years). They never had children and it was just “him and her against the world”. He never left her side. He especially talked about Joan, a nurse who had taken care of his wife while in the hospital. The husband described Joan as “on it”. He stated Joan knew he wore hearing aids and struggled to hear so Joan told him she would make sure to be in the room with him when any doctor came in to talk to him, to ensure the husband understood. The husband talked about Joan’s compassion and how wonderful she was. As I was in the room, Joan, who didn’t have a patient at the time, came to visit the husband and his wife. I left that room beaming full of pride, knowing how lucky I was to have Joan as a nurse on our team. The next day when Joan came in, the patient was no longer in the room. During the night shift, the patient had coded and was transferred to a nearby local hospital and was on a ventilator. Joan requested permission to follow up with the husband who was now alone making the agonizing decision to withdraw care on his beloved wife. Joan then requested permission to punch out so she could go and be with the husband and hold his hand while they removed his wife from life support. Anyone who knows Joan knows what a beautiful heart she has. Oprah Winfrey once said, “a stranger’s compassion can make a world of difference.” Joan makes that difference.