Second Overtime | JENSOO & CHAELISA

Chapter XLIV

The nurse came in first. Not Ms. Jung, someone else, a woman with tired eyes and soft-soled shoes that made barely a whisper against the linoleum. 

Her name tag read Park Eunha, RN, the letters slightly faded from too many trips through the hospital laundry. She carried a small tray balanced on one palm: blood pressure cuff, digital thermometer, a plastic cup of water that rattled faintly against the metal rim with each step.

Jennie watched her from the bed without lifting her head from the pillow. The room smelled different now, still antiseptic with the sour-chemical tang of hospital-grade disinfectant layered over bleached sheets and plastic tubing, but the air no longer carried her mother's perfume. That clean, expensive jasmine scent that Jennie had learned to associate with office doors closing and consequences arriving in measured, civil tones. It was gone. The absence of it felt like a window had been cracked open in a room she'd thought was sealed.

Nurse Park smiled with the kind of professional warmth that didn't ask for anything in return. "Hi, Jennie. I'm just going to check your vitals, okay? Nothing invasive. Just the usual."

Jennie nodded. The cuff wrapped around her upper arm and began to inflate, the pressure building in slow, insistent pulses until it felt like her heartbeat was being squeezed through a tube. She stared at the ceiling while the machine hummed beside her. The water stain in the corner had started looking less like a continent and more like a bruise, something that had bloomed beneath the surface and been left to heal wrong.

"Any dizziness?" Nurse Park asked, her fingers pressed lightly against Jennie's wrist.

"A little. When I sit up too fast."

"Nausea?"

Jennie hesitated. The nurse looked up from the cuff, her expression shifting almost imperceptibly. "You can say yes," she said. "There's no wrong answer here."

"Yes. On and off."

"Pain?"

Jennie's fingers twitched against the blanket. Her cheek still burned where the slap had landed. a dull, persistent heat that flared every time she turned her head. Her wrist ached from catching herself on the floor. Her whole body felt like it had been wrung out and hung somewhere cold to dry, the exhaustion so deep it had settled into her bones like sediment. "My face," she said quietly. "And my wrist. I fell. When I..." She couldn't finish. The word collapsed was too heavy, too much like something that happened to other people.

Nurse Park's eyes moved to Jennie's cheek. The skin there was still flushed, a faint swelling visible along the cheekbone. She didn't ask what happened. She didn't ask did your mother do that. She simply set the tray down with more care than necessary and said, "I can see some redness and swelling. Would it be okay if I documented it? For your chart."

Document. The word had become a bridge and a trap at the same time, something that could lead toward safety or toward more exposure than Jennie knew how to survive. "Do I have to?"

"No," Nurse Park said immediately. "It's entirely your choice. But it may help the social worker and the child protection team understand what happened tonight. We can take a photo for your medical record. Only with your consent. Nothing happens without you saying yes."

Consent. Jennie almost laughed, a dry, humorless sound that caught in her throat. The word felt foreign in this room, around her body, which had spent so many years being managed and arranged and corrected by someone else's hands. She touched her cheek lightly with her fingertips. Pain spread beneath the skin, hot and tender, as if the flesh itself were embarrassed to have been struck. "Okay," she whispered. "You can take it."