The In-Between

At the edge of life, Hadley Vlahos's patients confront faith, regret, love and the mysteries that medicine cannot explain.

Palliative care nurse Hadley Vlahos describes encounters with hospice patients whose final days reshape her understanding of purpose and hope. An elderly man sees visions of his late daughter; a younger patient regrets time spent fearing judgement; another woman's certainty in her faith is unsettled by the approach of death.

The In-Between is a memoir about hospice nursing, end-of-life care and the questions that surface when our time becomes limited. Vlahos considers how people make peace with dying, how the living retain bonds with those they have lost, and what death can teach about life.

For readers seeking compassionate writing about grief, palliative care, death and dying, these patient stories offer neither a single explanation nor easy certainty. Their power lies in the individual encounters and in the questions they leave open.