Lilith befriends a nurse

Lilith stopped on the path alongside Kahekili, not to smell the considerable perfumes in the grass, but to wait for a woman walking toward us. We exchanged words. "Have a nice walk," I started to say, when I realized that Lilith wanted her on the walk, too. She'd stop to smell, then run forward to catch up with, as she turned out, Maile, a Kapiolani nurse who just went back to work after the strike and lockout. (It wasn't for money, it was for ratios, she said, and they got their ratios.) As we started walking together, she said she'd been going to Kailua the other day, when she decided not to. She went to Target at Windward Mall to return something, but decided not to stay to shop. She drove back to our neighborhood, saw a toddler running down the sidewalk all by himself. She stopped her car, tried to flag him down, went to someone's open door. No parent. Called the police, waited for 20 minutes. Finally, a woman came running down the street . . . the nurse (her name is Maile) assumes there was a reason she'd not gone to Kailua and cut her shopping trip short. The little guy needed her.