The quiet after the wire

Pulled out the old interventional notes today—pages of procedure lists, wire sizes, stent lengths, and margins of one cath lab night. What struck me wasn't the technique, it's the stuff we never write down: the way the family in the waiting room knows before you say a word, the exact hum of the lab at 2am. I'm starting a different kind of notebook now, keeping the after instead of the procedure. Not sure it's anything yet, but it feels like the right kind of unfinished.