I stood at the check-in counter of my physician’s office, waiting for my yearly physical. Beside me, another patient was checking in. I recognized her instantly.

It was Denise—my childhood best friend.

And yet, I couldn’t bring myself to say hello.

We had spent our childhoods side by side—playing Barbies, cheerleading, swimming at the neighborhood pool. Every single day. She wasn’t just a friend; she was my safe place. We stayed close all through high school, best friends through and through.

Forty-plus years is a long time. But when you know someone that well, they live inside you forever.

Denise had always been sharp, brilliant even. Her parents were the kind you read about in books—gentle, encouraging, and warm. Growing up, I used to wish her mom could be mine. My own mother was verbally cruel, and my father drank too much. Life at home was chaos. But at Denise’s house? There was order. Love. Peace.

We were inseparable—until we weren’t.

After graduation, our paths split. Denise was off to one of those prestigious, intellectual universities. I had been accepted to several, too, but my mother insisted I stay home and attend community college to become a nurse. We could afford more—my father worked for IBM and my mother flaunted designer clothes—but ambition and independence were luxuries I wasn’t allowed.

I was devastated. Trapped in a life I hadn’t chosen.

And then something changed in Denise. She began to mock me. Made jokes about my school, my circumstances. Teased me cruelly—distance growing between us, until one day, she was simply gone.

She went on to join a sorority, earn her BSN, work two years in the ER, then head off to anesthesia school. I earned my ADN, stayed close to home, and dove into ER and ICU nursing. Our lives continued, parallel but apart.

Years later, I saw her again.

We were in the middle of a code blue—crash cart, CPR. A CRNA arrived to intubate the patient. It was Denise.

Afterward, I thanked her and asked if she remembered me—grade school, high school, Class of ’74?

She replied, “Oh yeah,” and walked away.

No warmth. No real recognition.

She had married, had three kids, divorced her husband because he “lacked ambition,” and later married a surgeon. They lived in a $1.7 million house. I, meanwhile, lived in a trailer with my hippie husband, both of us making do on less. We were on opposite ends of the financial spectrum.

But I built a life, too. I worked overtime, bought a home, took vacations with our three kids, and made sure each of them went to college. My husband didn’t have grand ambitions, but he loved our children and me the best he could.

Now we’re both retired.

And there she was—next to me again, decades later at the internal medicine office. Her lips were Botoxed, her pants too tight, her diamond ring dazzling, and her expression empty. Sixty-nine years old and still working so hard to impress the world.

I felt every old wound stir. The teasing. The rejection. The way she made me feel small.

And I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t summon the energy to pretend it didn’t matter. To pretend we were ever the same again.

She looked at me. I looked at her.

And I walked away.

Sometimes people don’t change. And sometimes, neither does the hurt they left behind.

“All that is gold does not glitter.” —J.R.R. Tolkien

When this game of life ends, none of it—none of the cars or diamonds or houses—goes with us.

But the way we treat people? That stays.

And I will not forget.

Debbie Moore-Black is a nurse who blogs at Do Not Resuscitate.