As Elise watched them, unease settled in her chest. There wasn’t any overt cruelty—far from it. But the care discharged looked suffocating. The kind that looks like protection from the outside but feels like control to the person trapped inside it. Elise couldn’t understand why Olivia’s dad hadn’t come. She wondered if the father wasn’t supportive of her choosing to have the baby.
Elise returned to the nurse’s station and wrote quietly in the notes: Patient appears fearful. Family dynamic unclear. Monitor support network. It wasn’t much, but it was all she could do. Sometimes, a single line in a chart is the only lifeline she could leave behind.