The nurse at the desk finally moved, picking up the fallen bottle with gloved hands and setting it in a basin beside the station. Formula still streaked the tile.

The father with the coffee cup stood and guided his family down the hall — not quickly, but deliberately, like someone leaving a room where violence had changed shape.

Melinda stared at me. For the first time, she actually looked at my face. “I’m sorry.”

I didn’t answer. Sorry was too small a word for a woman who had sat beside me at my lowest and gone home to the man helping put me there. Sorry is what people offer when they want the victim to become gentle again.

I had a surgery in less than an hour. I had a child upstairs whose parents needed my hands steady. I couldn’t spend my morning catching Melinda’s remorse.

Connor leaned toward me. “You don’t understand.”