I woke up an hour after Leighton died.

While I lay on my couch listening to the rain, Leighton was driving East in a storm. While I slept in my bed she was rushed from one hospital to another. The doctors and nurses tried every technique--Leighton would have known how to perform many of them by now. She would have let her fingers display the hours put into forming muscle memory, the long nights spent poring over Health Assessment textbooks, the early mornings spent in clinicals practicing patient care and best nursing practice. She would have been satisfied that they were doing everything right, using their best judgment and carrying out snapped commands without a moment's hesitation. But still 4:00 am arrived.

When I woke up at five the rain had stopped, but the early morning darkness was cool on my bare arms. I pulled on my scrubs and splashed water on my face before pulling my hair into a professional ponytail. My stethoscope was around my neck when I got into the car and we pulled up to the hospital for clinicals. When we got there we discovered a patient's heart kept stopping--she coded a few hours later. At mid morning one student nurse took a look at her phone. There had been an accident: Leighton had died.

To me Leighton was a face and head of curly hair that I saw intermittently. She was a voice on the other side of the classroom. She was a dazzling smile, presenting herself as larger than life in pictures popping onto the screen of my laptop. But when I looked into the eyes of my classmates I saw Leighton there. I saw the source of a joke that had brightened up a gloomy day. I saw a hug being offered to a friend. I saw a sorority sister willing to drop everything for the girls she called her own. I saw a young woman waiting eagerly for her boyfriend of six years to get down on one knee.

That's why I mourn. I didn't know her, but I feel in my core that one of our own has been lost. I see friends deep in mourning because someone they loved was taken away. I see women standing tall with tears threatening the corners of their eyes whispering words about a God who comforts, who upholds us, who strengthens us when we are weary. And I allow myself the privilege of joining them; I too expose my weakest parts to death and say YOU NO LONGER HAVE MASTERY OVER US.