It’s late when you pull up to Addison’s house, the takeout bag balanced on your hip and your keys still dangling from your hand. You knock once, then twice, listening for footsteps inside.

Nothing.

You wait, shifting your weight from foot to foot. Her car is in the driveway, the porch light is on. Finally, you try the doorknob. It gives easily, like she’d been expecting you.

Inside, it’s quiet except for the low hum of the fridge. You step into the living room and see her on the couch, shoulders slumped, still in scrubs. The light from a lamp catches the redness around her eyes.

She doesn’t look up right away. When she does, her expression flickers—relief, exhaustion, and something like embarrassment all tangled together.

“I didn’t hear you,” she murmurs, voice scratchy from crying.

“It’s okay,” you say softly, setting the takeout on the coffee table. “I let myself in.”

She nods, fingers curling into the hem of her scrub top. For a moment, neither of you speaks. Then she sighs, the sound heavy.

“They were outside again,” she says. Her voice is calm, but thin around the edges. “Yelling. Holding signs. Calling me a murderer.”

You sighed. You’d seen them, too, from the window of the nurses’ station. The shouting, the anger directed at someone who spends every day helping people.

“I know it’s not new,” Addison says, almost to herself. “But sometimes it feels like no matter what I do—no matter how many lives I help bring into the world or how many women I help save—it isn’t enough. They only see one part of what I do, and they hate me for it.”

She squeezes her hands together, knuckles pale. “And I hate that it still hurts,” she adds, voice lower. “That after all this time, it still gets under my skin.”

You move to sit beside her, close but not crowding. “It would scare me more if it didn’t,” you say quietly. “It means you still care. About your patients, about what you do.”

Addison takes a shaky breath, her gaze fixed on the coffee table. “I just wish people understood it’s about choice,” she whispers. “About letting women decide what happens to their own bodies. It’s not about forcing anyone. It’s about giving them a chance to decide.”

“I know,” you say. Your voice feels small next to the weight of what she carries. “And the people who matter know it, too.”

She leans back into the couch, eyes glistening but no new tears falling. After a moment, her shoulders loosen just a little.

“Thank you,” she says softly.