Yesterday was Valentine's Day, a day filled with lovely gestures from people who are dear to us. Cards, flowers, reminders of how much we are loved, or reminders of how much we've lost. For some people, it was just another day. Today, I stood in a hospital room as the walls closed in. The chest compressions weren't enough. The countless rounds of epinephrine weren't enough. My silent, pleading prayers weren't enough. A hope unexpectedly lost, a heart no longer beating, an entire family shattered. Meanwhile, for the world outside that room, it was just another day. Life and death are simultaneously happening all around us; some days one is simply more apparent than the other. I spend a lot of time in a place where first breaths and last breaths are simultaneously taken under the same roof, so this irony is never lost on me. I think about it as I walk the hospital halls, imagining the first shrill cries of a newborn and the happy tears of a new mother. In the ...