From Hidden Brain Media, I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is my unsung hero, stories where one person reached

out to help another in a time of need.

I would like to thank my unsung hero.

I do not know her name.

And all the sudden I look up and this hand slides two warm chocolate chip cookies across the desk.

To this day, it was one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me.

Today's story comes from Rasha Kavaleski.

In 2016, Rasha's mom was dying of kidney cancer.

Rasha went to visit her in hospice where she shared some childhood memories with her mom.

And I told her that I would pretend to be sick

when I was in elementary school because I just wanted to be with her.

That if I pretended to be sick, the nurse would send me home with mom, and I would be able

to be by myself with mom all day.

And I remember her laughing and smiling and shaking her head at that story.

She started to express some pain.

So we asked the doctors if there was anything we can give her and they gave her an

opioid which made it so that she was unconscious.

So her last night in the hospital,

I had left to go get some food,

and when I came back, a Latina nurse

was changing her sheets and adjusting her pillow and she's the unsung hero of this story.

And she kept calling my mother a moor over and over again. I'm just going to move your

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