Bargaining went to almost the final hours, but the nurses at Manahawkin’s Southern Ocean Medical Center finally reached a tentative contract agreement with SOMC’s parent company, Hackensack Meridian Health, on Sunday, the day before a strike was going to begin at 7 a.m. on Monday.

Whew.

After a daylong negotiation on Saturday and into the early-morning hours of Sunday, the nurses at Local 5138 of the Health Professionals and Allied Employees union, the largest union of registered nurses in New Jersey,…