There’s something about nursing homes that makes time feel both stretched and compressed. Twelve-hour shifts that somehow last three days. Five-minute breaks that vanish in seconds. And then there are those singular moments, often unremarkable at first glance, that end up dividing your life into clear before and after.
For me, that moment happened on a humid summer afternoon, surrounded by the endless cornfields that embrace our facility like a living maze. I was deep into my shift, already feeling the particular brand of exhaustion that comes from too many call lights and not enough hands.
The Door That Changed Everything
The front doorbell rang. Again.
If you’ve ever worked in healthcare during COVID, you know that feeling. First the sound comes that means someone needs let in , and that something is probably going to complicate your already complicated day. Deliveries that need signatures. Family members with questions of why or when they can visit again. People passing by who took a wrong turn at the last cornfield.
“Someone get the door!” echoed down the hallway. Even thought we knew it was probably the agency staff who already called and said they were lost.
Silence. The universal response when everyone is already drowning in tasks.
I sighed, set down whatever I was holding, and made the long walk to the front entrance. Not because I’m particularly helpful, ask anyone. But because sometimes you just want the ringing to stop.
What I didn’t know was that the universe had decided today was the day to play matchmaker, using a doorbell as its instrument of fate.
“I Got Lost in the Corn”
When I pulled open the heavy front door, I found someone who looked simultaneously frazzled and determined. Their hair was slightly windblown, cheeks flushed from what I would later learn was a combination of embarrassment and the panic of being late.
“Hi, I’m Kelsey,” they said, slightly out of breath. “I’m the agency staff for today.”
There’s a particular look agency staff get when they first arrive at our facility—a mix of trepidation and resignation. We’re not exactly known for being the easiest place to work. Rural location, high acuity residents, and a building old enough to have witnessed several generations of healthcare evolution.
But Kelsey’s expression had something else. A spark of humor despite the stress.
“I got lost,” they admitted, gesturing vaguely toward the agricultural labyrinth surrounding us. While I personally know trying to find this place without GPS. Was Not their smartest move.
I couldn’t help but laugh. I mean who tries to navigate the back roads of rural Ohio without navigation? These roads were designed by cows and maintained by optimism.
“Bold, and welcome” I replied, holding the door wider. “Welcome to the shit show.”
The Impromptu Tour
I gave Kelsey what we generously call the “grand tour” a rushed walk through the building while pointing out the bare essentials from the door to the first nurses station.
“Central bath is there. Break room is here, but the microwave makes everything taste like someone else’s lunch. That call light’s been on for ten minutes but she just wants to tell you about her grandson again. The ice machine works on Tuesdays and alternate Fridays, but only if you whisper nice things to it first.” You get the gist.
Kelsey laughed at my increasingly ridiculous commentary, somehow managing to absorb the actual important information while keeping pace with my hurried steps. There was something about the way they took in our chaotic environment. It was not with the usual agency staff dread, but with curious eyes and and funny banter.
By the time we reached the nurse’s station where my work friends were huddled, I had already made a decision I wasn’t fully conscious of yet.
The Declaration
“This is Kelsey,” I announced to my coworkers, who had the decency to pretend they hadn’t been watching us approach for the last thirty seconds. “They’re from the agency.”
My friends nodded with the polite disinterest reserved for temporary colleagues. Agency staff came and went like seasonal weather, sometimes helpful, sometimes challenging, rarely memorable.
I waited until Kelsey was just out of earshot, being shown to their assignment by our charge nurse.
“Dibs,” I said playfully but firmly to my friends.
“What?” asked one, looking up from his documentation.
“Dibs,” I repeated, watching Kelsey disappear down the hallway. “I called dibs on that one.”
Savannah snorted. “You can’t call dibs in on a person.”
“I just did,” I replied with the absolute certainty of someone who had never been more serious about anything in their life.
The Aftermath
Here’s what they don’t tell you about calling dibs on someone: it creates a strange kind of accountability. Suddenly, I had witnesses to my interest. My declaration hung in the air between my friends and me, a verbal contract I had no idea how to fulfill.
For the rest of that shift and many more, I found reasons to pass by wherever Kelsey was working. I offered help with residents I didn’t usually care for. I somehow ended up smoking the residents at exactly the same time as two other staff and Kelsey, despite having vowed to never smoke break the residents.
“Subtle,” Savannah whispered as she passed me in the hallway after my third “smoke break” encounter with them.
I wasn’t being subtle. I was being drawn by something I couldn’t yet name: a recognition, perhaps. A sense that this person who had tried to navigate corn mazes without technology might be exactly the kind of chaos my life needed.
The Contact Entry
At the end of one random shift, I did something I had never done before. I told Kelsey I thought she was beautiful.
And that was pretty much all to be written. We’ve been pretty attached at the hip since then.
When I eventually got Kelsey’s number and created the new contact in my phone, I didn’t type “Kelsey” as the name. Instead, my fingers tapped out a different word: “Dibs.”
Years later, through countless shifts together, through the transition from colleagues to friends to something much more, through all the changes in our lives and the evolution of our relationship, that contact name remains unchanged. A small digital artifact of the moment everything shifted.
The Meaning of Dibs
While I do admit calling dibs is childish, really. It’s what kids do for the front seat or the last cookie. It’s not how adults are supposed to approach potential relationships.
Yet, there was something perfect about its simplicity. In that moment, I wasn’t crafting a five-year plan or weighing compatibility factors. I was simply recognizing, with immediate clarity: This one. This is the one I want to know.
Sometimes the heart knows before the mind has caught up. Sometimes you meet someone who gets lost in cornfields because they believe in their own sense of direction despite all evidence to the contrary, and something in you recognizes the beautiful stubbornness of that act as kindred to your own.
The nursing home where we met continues to be chaotic. Call lights still ring unanswered for too long. The ice machine still has its mysterious schedule. Agency staff however are a thing of the past for now.
But now when the doorbell rings, I sometimes pause before answering it. Not out of reluctance, but because I’m aware of how a simple act like opening a door can sometimes open so much more.
I called dibs that day without fully understanding what I was claiming. I just knew, with a certainty that surprised even me, that the person standing at our door who was flushed, late, and defeated by corn, was someone I couldn’t let walk back out without making sure they’d return.
And every day since then has proven that sometimes, the most important things in life are the ones we have the wisdom to call dibs on when we have the chance.mmm
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