One Bob Evans waitress was looking another in the eye.

“You’re not going to die,” she said.

They had spent years working together at this tired breakfast chain, and had always bonded over how much they had in common. Regulars would mix up their names, Meg and Maureen, because they both had brown hair. But their bond was deeper than looks. Meg Stankiewicz had stayed in Ohio after high school, married a wholesome Midwestern boy, had three kids and worked two jobs to make ends meet. Maureen Erne, 10 years younger, had followed the exact same path.

But now, Maureen’s life was starting to mirror the worst part of Meg’s.

The lump. The doctor’s visit. The diagnosis.

Seventeen years earlier, Meg’s breast cancer had appeared. She was 35 years old. Her mother had died of the disease at 45. Meg tried to tell herself she wouldn’t go the same way. She had a double mastectomy. When she singed her wig in the oven while trying to bake her son a first birthday cake, she went out and bought another wig. She marched on as if everything was fine, until, one afternoon before Christmas, she broke down in the baby clothes section of Macy’s, where she realized that if she bought her children clothes big enough for them to grow into, she might not be around to see them fit.

But her children grew, and Meg lived to see it. Her path was to survive. Now, Maureen needed to follow that road.

“You are not going to die,” Meg repeated to Maureen again and again. But she understood what it feels like when dying is just one of many fears that consume you.

Maureen couldn’t afford to lose her job at Bob Evans, but in the days following radiation and chemotherapy, she could hardly lift herself up from the couch, let alone put on her polo and apron and spend hours on her feet carrying hot plates. So Meg picked up Maureen’s shifts, on top of her own and on top of her second job as a substitute teacher.

Meg kept it up as Maureen struggled through treatment.

Through all those months, Maureen learned to put on a happy face until her kids were on the school bus. She watched the envelopes marked “BILL” stack up. She grew teary when all the waitresses chipped in and bought her sons the Xbox they wanted from Santa. She tried to imagine what it might be like if she wasn’t around for Christmas next year. Finally, she summoned the energy to put her apron on and head back to Bob’s.

There, Meg pulled Maureen aside in the break room.

“Here,” she said, forcing a thick yellow envelope into Maureen’s hand.

With the same stern voice she had used to tell her friend not to die, she said, “Do not give this back to me.”

Inside was every dollar Meg had earned working Maureen’s shifts.

Maureen didn’t give it back. She’s made it to all four Christmases since.