She works as a licensed practical nurse in a small industrial town. For the past 20 years, she has watched people succumb to the selfish whims of fate: an unexpected stroke; the cancer that recurred; a flat line on the EKG. Through it all, she is expected to provide care and extend compassion.

Sometimes even compassion reaches its breaking point.

"Kathy, I want you to take the new admission. No one else feels comfortable with him."

"Okay. But what's the problem?"

"He has AIDS."

She felt her stomach turn. She had taken care of AIDS patients before and it always made her feel uncomfortable.

"I hate getting too close to them," she told her husband one night as they lay in bed. "I know if we take all the precautions, there's no danger of being infected. But what if something goes wrong? I can't afford to take that chance."

And yet here she was, moments later, putting on latex gloves and walking into a room which contained the thing she feared most.

"Good morning, Chris."

He had been in a terrible car crash. The doctors couldn't stop the bleeding, so they gave him a blood transfusion to save his life. Little did they know it would also deliver a death sentence.

"Mrs. Walker, why don't you leave the room for about 20 minutes? I want to give Chris a bath."

His mother looked away from the window. "I suppose," she sighed. "But I'll be back in 15. My son needs me."

As she walked out the door, a wry smile spread over his face. "Mother thinks she can buy time too," he said.

Kathy was also the mother of sons. Her youngest was only 16 and, until now, she thought she could cope with anything he directed her way.

Anything, that is, except death and the fact that you had to stand there, watch someone you love slip away from the living and know you could do absolutely nothing.

"Can you wheel me to the window? I want to look outside." It was the most he had said all afternoon, and she granted his request.

He sat there for a long time, the breeze blowing on his face and the sunlight resting on his eyes. It was only then that he allowed himself to cry.

"I am dying slowly and my mother doesn't want to talk about it. I need to talk about it."

They talked for a long time. He told her he only wanted one thing before he died -- to hold his dog. Hold something.

"See? There he is with my mother." Chris pointed excitedly at the window.

"Cisco! Look up here! Look at me!" He kept calling to the small brown terrier that raced across the hospital grounds. "That damn dog can't even see me."

It was a simple request. She never realized something so small would mean the world to someone else. In time she would understand the most miniscule of things would mean a lot of red tape when it came to hospital personnel.

"Pets are not allowed in the hospital. That's standard policy, " said most of the nurses on the floor.

But she still wasn't satisfied. She kept knocking on doors until the hospital chaplain intervened and told her he would see what he could do.

As it turned out, she never witnessed the outcome. Chris' mother brought the dog into the lobby during the three to eleven shift, long after Kathy had gone home for the day. But the story she heard was a reward in itself.

"They wheeled him downstairs, IV pumps and all," she said. "When he saw the dog, he couldn't stop crying. The dog kept licking his face and Chris couldn't stop crying."

Kathy wipes the tears from her face. "You know, I feel good about what I did. I told that to the girls I work with and, of course, some had mixed reactions."

"It's a waste of time. He's going to die anyway."

"No one told him to go out and get AIDS. I have no sympathy for those people."

"Why bother?"

She thinks for a moment and says, "I bothered because it meant so much to him. It was such a small thing: holding a pet, holding something that wouldn't back away when he held out his hands. My God, nothing was more important to that man."