Not long after, the nurse rolled the bassinet beyond the locked patient doors, and I followed close enough to keep one hand on its rail.
The right front wheel squeaked every few feet.
I noticed because everything else had gone quiet.
Behind those doors, my husband could not stand in a doorway and explain me to people before I could speak for myself.
For the moment, anyway.
The exam room was colder than the first one, and when I sat down, the reopened incision pulled hard enough that I had to grip the edge of the mattress until the nurse finished adjusting the bed.
I had not eaten breakfast.
I had prepared it.
That was different.
The nurse brought crackers, water, and a plastic basin in case the medication made me sick, then left the crackers on the rolling tray beside a paper straw wrapper that kept sticking to my wrist.
I opened one packet.
I did not eat it.
Mara, the advocate, sat in the visitor chair with my phone and the clear property envelope on her lap while I authorized the nurse to treat the incision and document whatever she found.
Before the nurse touched the dressing, I asked whether my husband could enter my medical record simply because he worked in the hospital.
Mara shook her head.
Then she paused.
She told me employees were supposed to access charts only for legitimate work reasons, but she could not promise what he had or had not already done.
That answer was less comforting than a promise.
It was also useful.
I asked for the hospital privacy office.
Mara made the call from the room instead of sending me downstairs, and I asked the nurse to keep the baby beside me while we waited.
Keep it.
That had become my rule for anything with a date, a time, or somebody else’s words attached to it.
Sometime after lunch, my husband’s first new message arrived.
He wrote that he understood I was frightened and that nobody wanted to take the baby from me.
I read it twice because the wording was so careful.
Then another message came from his mother.
She asked what size diapers the hospital was using because she had already stocked the nursery at her house.
My thumb hovered over the screen.
I did not answer.
I saved both messages.
The baby made a small clicking sound in her sleep, and I put two fingers against the blanket near her ribs until I could see the fabric moving.
Then I opened the county docket again.
I checked the case number.
I checked the filing time.
I checked the unsigned agreement inside the clear envelope.
Nothing had changed.
There was still no temporary custody order.
There was still no signed agreement requiring me to leave my baby anywhere.
There was only a petition, a stack of papers my husband had wanted signed before sunrise, and two people already talking as though my daughter had a different home waiting for her.
When the privacy office called back, a woman explained that she could request an audit of access to my medical record, although the review would not happen instantly and she could not tell me what it would show.
I asked her to request it.
She asked whether I believed an employee might be using hospital access for a personal reason.
“Yes.”
She recorded my answer.
